Hey everyone…

It’s hard to believe it’s been not even a year since Cheryl started this blog, since Cheryl was diagnosed. It’s been four months since she died.  I feel like we haven’t even begun to understand what it means to lose Cheryl, or at least I know I haven’t. Every day I am reminded of so many amazing things she did for me, how she encouraged me to be a better person, how she made the world a better place by being–as one friend said at her London memorial–”the patron saint of shy kindness”

Cheryl would probably smack me right upside the head if she knew I just called her a saint on her own blog!

Anyway, I will try to continue to update here as much as possible, and will continue to maintain the domain and the redirect. Sometimes  I do forget to post updates here though, so it’s best to keep an eye on Cheryl’s facebook page.  Although I don’t have access to her account and therefore can’t accept friend requests, you can subscribe to her feed, since all the posts are public.

There will be more information about the fund we are setting up at Astrea to honor Cheryl, as well exciting news about her work here soon. In the meantime, I will be posting a little bit about Cheryl and our live and love together at Grief Sucks.

Thanks so much to each of you who have loved and continued to love Cheryl, and by extension, me.  One of those the last times Cheryl spoke she said “I’m sorry about all this. You didn’t deserve any of it.” and I said “no honey, but I deserved you, and life with you has been amazing”

Life without Cheryl is rather horrific, but I’ve been so lucky to have the continued support of all the amazing people in Cheryl’s life. Thank you so much.

Kelli

Astraea is in collaboration with Kelli Dunham & Community to establish a fund in Cheryl B’s memory. Your contribution can be mailed to 116 E. 16th Street, 7th Floor, NY, NY 10003. If mailing a check please be sure to indicate “In Honor of Cheryl B” in the memo section. If interested in making your gift online,  visit Astrea online and please indicate that the gift is in honor of Cheryl B in the notes field.

ABOUT ASTRAEA

The Astraea Foundation is a dynamic global foundation providing critically needed financial support to lesbian-led, trans, LGBTI and progressive organizations. Astraea staff, board, members and grantees all share a deep commitment to feminist principles, racial and economic justice and human rights.

That was one helluva afternoon, wasn’t it?

For context reminder, a little excerpt from Cheryl’s memoir:

“While many of my peers frolicked on the Jersey Shore in beaded half-shirts, I spent much of my teen years in my room listening to Pink Floyd albums on cassette, rereading Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and filling sheets of loose leaf with stream of consciousness prose.

I often fantasized in front of my mirror, heavy on the blue eyeliner, as I accepted imaginary literary awards and ran with a crowd I had painted as my own personal Warhol factory (a scenario in which I was the Warhol).

In my make believe multi- disciplinary art world
I was understood,
I was part of the scene.
(It would be) A place where I was awesome”

Cheryl found/created the place where she was understood/part of the scene/awesome.  As Sarah Schulman observed on Sunday “The memorial itself proved that Cheryl’s life was a success”

Thanks so much for being present and for all who shared in all the different ways.

I am especially grateful to Genne Murphy and Sinclair Sexsmith for taking care of the majority of the details as well as Dixon Place for donating the space.

We’ll be linking below to the texts of what various people  shared at the Memorial. If you weren’t a part of the official presentation but would like to add your comments we’d love it if you did it below.  Comments will be moderated because that’s the default for the blog, but I will approve them as quickly as possible.

With so much love, respect and gratitude for this amazing community,

Kelli Dunham (Cheryl’s girlfriend/partner)

Here’s what was shared at the Memorial by:

Ducky Doolittle

Sinclair Sexsmith

Kelli Dunham

Derrick Kardos

Cheryl died in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 18th. The details of her memorial follows. We will be adding links to press and blog posts here, so if you’ve written something you’d like to be included, email cherylblegacy at gmail dot com) with the link and we’ll include it.

If you are interested in publishing Cheryl’s work, those requests are being handled by Sarah Schulman, she can be reached in care of the legacy address as well.

If you’d like to remember Cheryl with a donation, we are in the process of negotiating with an LGBT arts organization to provide a writers’ scholarship in Cheryl’s name. The details of this should be settled in the next few weeks, so please keep checking back. If you’d like to financially help out Cheryl’s partner Kelli, who lived at the hospital and rehab 24/7 from April 5 until the time of Cheryl’s death, you can do so here.

You can also RSVP to the facebook event for the memorial service here.