A letter from Samora
On Process.
I wrote this song in the midst of a low time. About loss, about shame, about grief. I wrote it to try and be kinder to myself. To ask questions about what honesty sounds like, what care feels like. I wrote it to counteract the ways that we are all taught to bury so much about us, so much that we feel. I wrote it to honor what pain really feels like, and what grace hopefully looks like.
Process is my most truly personal song. It got me through the loss of my grandfather, and the guilt of knowing he felt my depression even as I cared for him. It was my way to understand and verbalize what I was going through, and confirm to myself that it’s okay to feel the way I feel. That it’s okay for me to not be able to ‘conquer’ everything that weighs me down in a day, or a month; that it is truly a process, one day at a time, holding yourself to account but also trying your best to love yourself, particularly in a world that’s taught you not to. And it allowed me to connect with so many people as I sang it in live shows, as I found so many who shared my pain and my feelings.
And the Process film, created in collaboration with director Christian Padron, got us both through this year so far. It got us through the deaths of Kobe & Gianna Bryant; it got us through the quarantine period; and, as we edited it, it became a tribute to this moment of international Black power and the heaviness and anguish so many of us feel as we battle the forces of the state that murder our people in so many ways. As we see the external public outcry around the world in recognition of the premature death caused by systems of white supremacy, policing, and capitalism around the whole world, we also know that there is so much internal anguish and heaviness that so many of us have to carry around. So much grief. This film is for all those in mourning, all those just putting one foot in front of the other to get through each day, and all those supporting each other.
It’s hard to put into words what this song and this film means to me. I hope it moves you, and carves out a space within you to hold yourself and hold others in care. that is all I can ask.
Much love,
Samora Pinderhughes
I wrote this song in the midst of a low time. About loss, about shame, about grief. I wrote it to try and be kinder to myself. To ask questions about what honesty sounds like, what care feels like. I wrote it to counteract the ways that we are all taught to bury so much about us, so much that we feel. I wrote it to honor what pain really feels like, and what grace hopefully looks like.
Process is my most truly personal song. It got me through the loss of my grandfather, and the guilt of knowing he felt my depression even as I cared for him. It was my way to understand and verbalize what I was going through, and confirm to myself that it’s okay to feel the way I feel. That it’s okay for me to not be able to ‘conquer’ everything that weighs me down in a day, or a month; that it is truly a process, one day at a time, holding yourself to account but also trying your best to love yourself, particularly in a world that’s taught you not to. And it allowed me to connect with so many people as I sang it in live shows, as I found so many who shared my pain and my feelings.
And the Process film, created in collaboration with director Christian Padron, got us both through this year so far. It got us through the deaths of Kobe & Gianna Bryant; it got us through the quarantine period; and, as we edited it, it became a tribute to this moment of international Black power and the heaviness and anguish so many of us feel as we battle the forces of the state that murder our people in so many ways. As we see the external public outcry around the world in recognition of the premature death caused by systems of white supremacy, policing, and capitalism around the whole world, we also know that there is so much internal anguish and heaviness that so many of us have to carry around. So much grief. This film is for all those in mourning, all those just putting one foot in front of the other to get through each day, and all those supporting each other.
It’s hard to put into words what this song and this film means to me. I hope it moves you, and carves out a space within you to hold yourself and hold others in care. that is all I can ask.
Much love,
Samora Pinderhughes