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!

    

Make a plan: Guard Your Spirit

I know some folks hate lists but I'm too drained after the heaviness of this weekend's pain to write sentences. This is what poured out of me this morning right before I let the tears flow. I call it, "how to survive tolerating/being in a relationship with family members who have hurt you". It might come in handy for some of you, especially during holidays, graduations, weddings, funerals, or pretty much any other "obligatory" time we are sacrificing our souls in the name of "family"

1. Prepare an escape plan-have somewhere to go if shit gets too heavy. I was lucky to have a friend offer to let me come to her house if I needed
2. Be open with your support network about the status of your mental health before, during and after they arrive. Let them know so they can be available if you show up at their door in your underwear in the middle of December or you need call/text them at 2:34am. I was grateful to receive texts and hugs from friends all weekend and openly told people I was not feeling ok.
3. Build a support network that can handle your anxiety laden, random, and frequent texts or calls (you need this to do #2)
4. Force yourself to drink water
5. Force yourself to eat 
6. Leave the house solo to go run "errands" without apology. 
7. Have a place that brings you joy to retreat to if things get bad--for me it's thrift stores (went to 3 of them yesterday) or I go somewhere in nature-flowers, water, weeds--whatever!
8. Process your trauma with a therapist. Process the ways maintaining this relationship affects your life with a therapist. This level of support is needed in addition to the support we receive from friends, family and our faith communities.
9. Eat ALL the fucking sweet potato pie you like and fuck anyone who judges you for doing so.  
10. Go for a walk, run, etc-be active, it helps release the endorphins you need to balance out all your feelings of depression, anxiety & rage! 
11. Ask other family members to act as your buffers/stand in hosts. My grannie and Ced do this for me all the time. I love them both deeply for enduring when I cannot
12. Take "naps". They can be real naps or fake ones but take 'em! Anything to run out the fucking clock! Including faking headaches!
13. Don't feel obligated to be "on" or host around the clock
14. Don't tolerate anymore abusive or controlling language or behavior! It is a privilege for them to even get to see you so fuck them if they start acting a fool! Seriously! Fuck them! Show them the door! This is your life! 
15. Decide which environment and what time periods work best for you. I prefer hosting because I feel more in control. If on their turf--hotels it is for me. In both cases 48-72 hrs is all they get and I consider that a gift. It's sucks no matter what but I have learned where my tolerance limits are and don't give a shit whose feelings I hurt. 
16. Name your pain!! Share your story of trauma AND your story of survival! Your silence will not protect you (Audre Lorde)
In short, make a plan for your survival but remember you DO NOT have to stay in relationships with people who have hurt you. I don't care what your cultural, religious, or gender norms say! You deserve to be safe and if you are not safe, get safe! ️

Birthing Healing

As I got off the CTA train yesterday evening, I felt a twinge in my midsection. I wondered if it was my uterus actually hurting because I was grieving my son’s impending move to college the next morning. They felt a bit like cramps so I decided to call them “labor pains”. 

I needed a familiar reference point to process and cope with the pain I was feeling, whether physical, spiritual, emotional—or combined.   I needed to push myself to accept that the life that I had brought into the world was about to enter another stage of life’s journey. I also knew I had survived labor pains before so I told myself that I could survive this life transition as well. So with my hands gripping my abdomen and at times throwing up into one of Illinois State University's garbage cans, I’ve spent the last 24 hrs laboring and reflecting on the past 18 years since I’ve become his/a mother. 

One of my biggest goals in raising a son has been to make sure that he never intentionally hurts women and that he would grow to advocate for their freedom. I prayed for him to be gentle,  justice minded, peace loving, and to have a fighting spirit. I am so proud to say that the 18 year old that began college today, has become a warm, caring, sensitive, fun loving, and informed young man that I hoped he would become. 

A few examples flashed through my mind during the 2 hour car ride and like calming waves they washed over me dulling the pain. Sometimes it was remembering the small things like his love for cats or being a caring and highly flexible older brother. Other times it was the big things like remembering him sitting in the back seat of the car explaining the menstrual cycle to his little sister (thank you, World of Inquiry 8th grade science teachers!) or when he asked to stay while I delivered the placenta following his sister's birth. I recall, at age 4, he reminded me to be more patient and gentle with his younger brother who would not go to sleep as instructed. He said calmly but assertively, " He's just a baby, Mom!". Then there was the time he tied a pink bow in his hair during track meets in support of his coach’s wife who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She mentioned that he would always check on her. I didn’t even know they had a relationship but to learn your teenager found space in his heart to care for another is heartwarming.  Or the time he came home from school raving about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. Then there was the day he began to draw connections between my life and the Black women characters in Alice Walkers' books. He was the one who got me into reading the Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" series. Here was a boy who wasn't big on reading was suddenly under his covers for days diving deep into fiction worlds of injustice & resistance with a girl as the shero. 

He, like his siblings, have always been supportive of my dreams and interests. They understand me as a working mother and they also get that I value life outside of motherhood. He has always been there coaching me along whether it was roller derby or road races. He was one of my first customers when I began selling vintage clothing. He partied hard with a drag queen at one of my fundraisers for the Chicago Abortion Fund. He wears a button on his visor that says “Value Women” and proudly identifies as a black feminist. Yes, his room stays a mess and he plays video games nonstop. 

But he has blossomed into a young man that moves through this world not harming others. This is an essential intervention that I and his father have been committed to in loving our son. His masculinity is his own and is not bound by other people’s limited views of what it means to "be a man". (sidebar: His blackness is also his own and not bound by other peoples’ limited notions of what it means to "be black").

All of this floods through my mind as we unpack and get him settled into his dorm. I did not cry because I began to realize he’s ready, not only academically ready for college, but ready to offer the world the positive energy that it needs…the peace loving and kind man that it needs. Just like labor, it felt horrible during but then there was pure relief and elation in the end. I knew he was going to be alright and that he understood what was expected of him as a human.

His presence in my life and our world has helped me to heal.  He is joy. 

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!