It’s the Friday before the fashion show. Donna Bruce is busy at her salon getting all of the last-minute details together.
The lighting is cozy. The decor is pink and sparkly. A Barbie doll of Black beauty mogul Madam C.J. Walker sits perched on a ledge next to a bottle of Narcan.
“You see I have my Narcan right up there. It's because my son Devon was found unresponsive in his vehicle,” Donna said, pointing to the narcan and then to the framed portrait of Devon Wellington, her son who she lost to a heroin overdose in 2021.
It was losing Devon that inspired Bruce to start a fashion show for grieving parents. Her first, held last year at the War Memorial Plaza, honored about 200 mothers. They had lost children to gun violence or substance misuse. It was her new community. This year the show honored bereaved fathers too.
“When I listen to their stories and how their kids passed away, I become grateful. But I want them not to hurt,” said Bruce.
Bruce is a Peer Recovery Navigator. She’s had her fair share of hardship. In her salon chair sits her daughter Quesha. Bruce curls Quesha’s hair as she thinks back on her relationship with her own mother and their life in Baltimore’s public housing, surrounded by addiction and abuse.
“I've always longed for a relationship with my mother and my mother suffered with mental health and substance misuse,” said Bruce. “And the only relationship I could get from my mom was to use drugs with her.”
Donna’s mother Rhonda Culver, died from HIV/AIDS. Donna herself was put into prostitution and physically abused — but eventually, she got sober.
But through all of her struggles she had hair.
“Doing hair was therapy for me to create art to escape reality, to make others feel good, which is the gift that I understand that I have,” said Bruce, who doesn’t begrudge her mother for her struggles. “She didn't get a chance to heal. They have so many resources and things like that now, but she never got a chance to do any of that.”
Through events like the Fashion Show for Bereaved Parents, Bruce hopes others will find healing and community.
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a few hundred people gathered in the Reginald F. Lewis museum in Baltimore. The crowd was a kaleidoscope of gold satin, houndstooth capes and dashiki robes. The people all had one thing in common: They have lost a child or loved one to gun violence or substance misuse.
“I enjoyed coming here. I enjoy… seeing the clothing. I usually don't go to fashion shows. So this was pretty cool,” said Michelle Hines, whose son Izaiah Carter was fatally shot outside Patterson High School on March 6th. This will be Hines’ first holiday season without him.
“It's been nice to see other people and then to connect with other parents who've been going through the exact same thing as myself,” said Hines, adding that she needs events with fun and positivity to motivate her to keep going on some days. It’s helpful, she says, to ask others how they manage their grief over many years while for her, she’s still in year one.
Models strutted down the runway, wearing local Baltimore designers and others from as far away as Atlanta and Las Vegas. Some silhouettes were whimsical, sort of steampunk. Others were more modern and gender non-conforming. Portraits of the dead being honored scroll across a screen above the runway.
And the models have their own stories too.
“I had a father who was addicted to drugs like all his childhood growing up into adulthood. He's a recovering addict now, doing well, and thriving in the community,” said Carl Rodgers. Like Rodgers, most of the models also had been impacted by substance misuse or gun violence.
Krystal Gonzalez spoke at a panel during the event. She lost her daughter Aaliyah in July in the Brooklyn Homes mass shooting that also killed Kylis Fagbemi, another honoree. There were 28 others wounded that night.
For Gonzalez, every day is still surreal but events like this one do help.
“It’s a really beautiful expression to honor the families of our bereaved loved ones. I never thought I would be here four and a half months later. This is not my life. But it turns out this is my life. So I’m really honored to be here and invited tonight.”
As for Donna Bruce, she’s hoping for more fashion shows and to open a trauma-informed hair salon in 2024.
