Rams in the Bush

 I’ve been off of FB for the past week to make sure I hit a writing deadline. Decided to jump on yesterday after a grueling work week and found this screenshot from my younger sister. 

She was cautiously updating me that she had been contacted by our  paternal aunt, who we’ve never met, to share that our father/my abuser, had died last Saturday. I told her I thought he had died years ago and that I wish him well in hell for the 2nd time. Then I checked on her to see how she was doing, though I knew our energies were aligned when I read her righteous response “We don’t want the body”.  Still I know our parents’ abusive behaviors have fucked my younger siblings up in some way and my oldest sibling heart breaks daily knowing that I could not protect them from harm when we were younger and after I left for  college. 

                                                          

I guess I’m here to testify once again that traumas are real AND that triggers are real AND that yesterday’s news definitely sent me spiraling. I’m also here to testify that my inner circle held me yesterday. At first my body went numb and I tried to just float away while I watched TV. This has been a coping mechanism for me since I was a kid. I’d “escape” my reality and travel to other worlds via Star Trek or fantasize about being a super shero like Wonder Woman or Princess Leai who kicked mofos’ asses or I’d become part of a safe, loving and well functioning family like “The Cosby’s” 🤦🏽‍♀️. This numbing/dissociative strategy worked for a bit yesterday but my current healing practice has been to allow my feelings in and deal with them. I wasn’t ready so after awhile I ratcheted up my numbing by emotional eating. I remember at some point becoming aware that I was heart hungry not food hungry and what I really wanted was a hug. Damn you, mindfulness! My old ways of surviving were not working so I began texting my family, friends and my therapist. They all responding with care and compassion though some shared that they didn’t quite know what to say. I acknowledged that there aren’t any Hallmark cards for people’s fathers who died who had also been their abusers. I decided that I would give them grace and did not feel unsupported when they didn’t say the “right” things because I didn’t even know what to say or how to feel. 

Some tried to call to check on me right away but I was still wanting to sit in my numbing space and wasn’t quite ready to feel or process the full heaviness of it all yet. But at some point I began struggling to find oxygen. I could feel the pain and tears bubbling up into my throat and I knew texts were not enough. When my childhood BFF, Akilah Monik, asked me if I needed to talk, I accepted her gift. No strong black woman here. I knew needed softness and connection. And because she has known this particular pain the longest, I felt safe coming undone. In fact, my tears began to fall right at that moment of texting, “yes, I would like to talk”. I felt myself return to my body but I also remember feeling surprised at how hot and deep the pain felt almost 35 years since the last time my father sexually violated me. It felt like fresh wounds again. Like I hadn’t “healed” one bit. Like I hadn’t spent pages upon pages journaling or hours upon hours in therapy. I was 5 again. 10 again. 16 again. But I needed to come undone again. I needed to be allowed to sit in my pain again even when I didn’t know why or what I was feeling. I gave myself permission. To feel the rage, the sadness, the neglect, the loneliness, the forced independence, the years of not knowing what love and safety were, the years of internalized slut shaming and suppressed sexuality and desire, and the loss of my family system, my sibling relationship and my home town. I opened the flood gates and chose to feel it all. 

I am so grateful that she  created a tender space for me to release it.  She said she was happy to be my “ram in the bush”. My heathen ass pretended to know what that Biblical reference meant and we laughed about it but she said she understands it to mean, being granted a choice/space that provides some ease and comfort. She was my ease and my comfort last night. The place where I could crumple. My ram. 

I also am deeply grateful for the other loving texts, attempted calls, and offers to stop by and care for me. I have accepted that  I may always walk with this pain but I also now walk with a safety net of care and love. And for that I am eternally grateful. We all deserve to have places to ease into our softness and work through our pains in this life

Son Shining

On June 3, 2018 I was all smiles as he walked across the stage but the next day I woke up back in my feelings about my sonflower graduating from high school and heading to college. We moved to our community 6 years ago and he began his time here as the middle child entering the 7th grade, the middle of middle school. He was a free spirit back then—mohawk and skate boarder. Marching to the beat of his own drum. He signed up for club soccer and realized quickly that our laid back nature about team sports and life was not valued in the culture of our new over structured and intensified suburban reality. He dropped skate boarding and double downed on soccer. He cut his mohawk he had worn for 7 years. He navigated the sea of other middle schoolers and the ocean of high schoolers over the past 6 years. He also has maintained an honor roll GPA despite the constant life stress and family transitions. In his senior year, he decided that he did not want to play club soccer any more. It was like he woke up and remembered he was enough and he had had enough of the team sports hamster wheel. He decided to play soccer and live life for the joy.      

He began spending time playing basketball, working out and hanging out with friends whom we never met. At times, I did not know how to parent him. He was fiercely independent and private and I, a social worker and self professed super mama, just wanted him to "share his feelings". He chose not to go to homecoming or the prom. I learned new notions of a "normal" high school experience. He applied to college without my help. He was accepted in 7 of the 8 colleges he applied to but only 2 of the 8 accepted him into the Civil Engineering & Architecture programs that he applied to. I stewed as I thought about the structural ways Higher Ed pushes black and brown folks out of STEM, knowing he was a strong student. He decided that he would major in communications not Civil Engineering or Architecture, though as a Lego kid he had spent his childhood building and drawing new worlds. I wanted to advocate and fight the systems that stood in his way but to be honest, I felt powerless. I held my tongue and my heart.

 I also didn’t quite get his sharp pivot since he had already taken 3 courses in Engineering but I was learning that supporting and loving him meant following his lead not understanding him. Still I was haunted by all that I imagined he was navigating. He reminded me often to stop constructing his journey as a victim narrative and to trust him when he said that he was good. He soon announced that he and his 2 best friends, whom I met on graduation day, had decided to go college together and would be room mates. And days after dropping him off at college he announces that he is joining a fraternity that is not one I am familiar with from the black experience. Initially I felt like I had failed to help him appreciate our family’s traditions and valuation of black organizations and institutions. But I forgot that what I also value is bodily autonomy and freedom of expression. I forgot that I raised my child to blaze his own trail and to live beyond the boundaries of what the world, including our family’s world, defined for him. I raised him to chart his own course--and so he is. 

I have loved him deeply as I had hoped to be loved by my parents. Which at times, I admit, may have even been smothering. Parenting is hard. Parenting as a black mother of a black son is harder. Parenting as a survivor of emotional, physical and sexual abuse further complicates it all. I generally parent out of worry, fear, anxiety and then somewhere down the line, I remember to just breathe and let them blossom. It does not come naturally to me. Letting go, loosening my grip, is healing. Tightening it risks producing intergenerational harm. I am learning and he is teaching. 

I dropped my son off at college 9 days ago. I have felt every emotion I own since I dropped him off but the 3 most prominent are love, awe, and pride. He is a beautiful and brilliant human and I am so grateful the world gets to experience him. Keep shining brightly, sonshine!

                                                                     Love, Mom!

    

Rerouting...

Captain's Log: 11.16.15

I need to write this now. Before I know the outcome. Before the celebration. Before I even know if there will be a celebration. 

Before the possible disappointment of not getting the call. 

I'm feeling joy in this moment. I am feeling on edge and fearful but I am joy filled about taking a risk professionally. Besides all the shit talking I do, I'm not a big risk taker. 

Never been entrepreneurial. Never gamble. 

Never share all of me with any one person. 

Never say what I think and how I feel when it needs to be said and especially to those that have power over me.

I play it safe. 

This may be hard to believe for some but I'm very cautious. I fear failing. I fear falling. I fear making mistakes. So I am hesitant and over process everything in my head and with others. I worry a lot. 

What if I listen to myself? What if I change course? What if I make a mistake? What will others think? What if I say, do, or write what I actually think and feel?

 I wake up full of anxiety most days and I stuff it down or breathe through it until it subsides. I do what others say I should be doing although I often silently protest. I resist in the forms of ambivalence, avoidance and being "under" productive.  

But today I await the response to my recent risk taking. I listened to this loud little voice inside me, it was Monique, reminding Sekile what her life goals had been way back when. She wanted to be a social worker. She wanted to serve her community. She wanted to help girls and women. She asserted herself, forcing me to not settle for another's life quest. 

My child abuse and incest trauma directed me towards a profession that was founded on helping others in crisis and transition. Yet, as I continued with my studies and came in contact with folks who questioned and critiqued my life choices, I cowered and shrunk in the light. I changed course to be like one of them. The intellectuals and scholars. Their eloquence demanded respect and I loved the way they commanded others' attention. I also wanted to be like the well off middle class folks. I didn't want to financially struggle and kept hearing "you won't get paid a lot as a social worker". I knew I couldn't go back home and be a dependent in an unsafe and violent house. No, I refused to return to that hell.

But mostly,  I wanted to be seen and heard so I plowed forward on their path thinking it was my path. I worked hard at trying to be them and even when I thought I had perfected emulating them, they still shunned me for not doing it right. I contorted and disguised myself and the toxic process exposed me anyway. Today I thank them for helping me see me for me, for I have been wearing a very heavy mask. 

I have been off my path for so long, I almost forgot who I was and what I set out to do with my life. This year, I felt myself cracking under the pressure and began to come undone. The mask was heavy and I needed clean air in my lungs. 

So I had  a choice to make, go deeper into this false life or take a risk and retrieve myself. 

I am no less afraid. I am no less unsure. I am no more clear of my path...but I took the risk and it feels electric! My joy feels bigger than the nagging fear of failure that is ever present. I do hope my phone rings with good news of a new position but I want to cherish this "before" moment of joy. This moment of choosing to do the unthinkable. This moment of not walking away but of choosing to walk toward my light.

this quote helped to propel me forward

Captain's Log: 4.16.15

It's been exactly 5 months since I drafted the post above. I decided not to publish it because it would have publicly revealed that I was on the job market. Well, I never got the call I was waiting for back in November. The university offered to position to another deserving candidate. Instead, I propelled forward and committed to searching for a position, whether inside or outside of higher education, that would bring me joy. There was more disappointment along the way and my emotions have been heightened and conflicted in ways I did not know was possible. I think my turning inward and moving away from many of the activities and people I loved was in some ways acts of self preservation. I just needed to steer all my energy in simply staying alive and staying stable psychologically.  By the end of 2015 I was emotionally, psychologically, and physically drained but my spirit is strong and I am determined to live.

It's been 5 months and in those five months I have not only become clearer about my path, I have found another job!!!!!!  I remain afraid of the unknown but I feel unstuck and spiritually free. I am living through both my pain and joy in this moment and accepting their coexistence. This is my journey and I have chosen to reroute. 

we gon' be alright

For the past few weeks I have been nervous about how I was going to be able to give my nephew a "better life" here in Chicago. I am fairly new to the area and have no idea how to go about finding him a job or internship. I'm excited but want to truly "help" him.

 I woke up to his Facebook post reflecting on his life as a black boy and boldly stating that he was living in spite of what the world has said about him!  He also expressed gratitude for where he had come from but noted it was time for him to move on and begin his new life.

His post was like bright sunshine. His words clarified my perspective so fiercely that he blinded me with his brilliance.  As I reread his post tears streamed from my eyes. It was as if our lifelines were connected, like two strikes of lightening that criss cross for a second. He, like me, knew when it was time to go. to get FREE. But most importantly, HE doesn't need ME to "help" him. He is helping himself. He is self determined. He is a survivor. He is my blood. We are cut from the same cloth. I am supporting him but he is his own man. He is charting his course. Shining so very brightly. 

There's an eeriness in the air when a person makes up their mind. There is a look in their eyes that says it all. An intensity that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.  They don't need to be pushed, cajoled, or  encouraged. They don't need role models or mentors. They are brave and driven,  and yes, they still need praise from others. But they themselves have decided to move through world taking big steps. Determined. He has that look in his eyes. 

So as I wait for his plane to land and my family circle to grow wider all I can say is I'm so proud of my nephew, for he is truly growing into his fullest being. I also am deeply humbled that I am here to bear witness to his life affirming journey...and we gon' be alright!