Beyond the Timeline: Reaching Back to 2016 to Process Today’s Grief
Why a decade-old poem feels more relevant today than ever before.
I wrote Dying in My Timeline in 2016 when my name was still Candace D. Henry. I was so hurt by what was happening, and then there was one case that shook me to my core and pushed my tears into words.
When I released it, some people thought the last section of my poem was creative overkill, and I had to correct them because it was based on an actual case. The victim was Ronnie Shumpert, and those things really happened to him.
His cousin reached out to me to thank me for bringing attention to his brutal death when it didn’t hit the timelines in the same way as the other murders of that time period, because there was no video evidence of Ronnie’s torture-consumed murder at the hands of law enforcement.
I’m very calculated in the way I consume news to make sure I maintain my balance. I didn’t even watch the videos of Renee Good, however yesterday I saw the death of Alex Pretti from multiple angles, and it made me feel the same way I felt in 2016.
For more information on what happened to Ronnie Shumpert, check out this article.
