All Her Little Secrets

by Wanda M. Morris

Every one of my secrets had been a painful lesson that I should have been learning from instead of running from. Until I stood up and owned them, they would continue to hold me in this impossible grip of fear.

I was a fighter. Black girls—big-boned and thick-skinned—fight all the time. We fight to be heard, to be recognized, to stay alive. We fight even when we don’t know we’re fighting. And now, despite all the labels society tried to place on me, I knew I wasn’t an angry Black woman. I was a fighting Black woman and I’d trained hard right here in this town.