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Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.
Man, I’d rather go ten rounds with Mike Tyson than face some inner truths that have lain dormant. Hell, at least with Mike, I can throw the fight. But this inner battle, this inner fight I couldn’t throw.
I think about the complexity of her childlike heart compared to the ferocious, maternal warrior who would angrily snatch her wig off to kick anybody’s ass who even thought about harming her babies.
There are decades of suppressed secrets, trauma, lost dreams and hopes. It was easier to live under that veil and put on a mask than to slay them.
You know, when you’re poor, you live in an alternate reality. It’s not that we have problems different from everyone else, but we don’t have the resources to mask them.
The loss of any pet is hard, but it’s especially hard when they serve a larger purpose that is fulfilling the deficit of loyalty and love.
It’s like our parents would say when we were younger, “A hard head makes a soft ass.” That means some lessons you have to learn the hard way.
Working hard is great when it’s motivated by passion and love and enthusiasm. But working hard when it’s motivated by deprivation is not pleasant.
being transparent are two totally different things. Being real is wearing fifteen-dollar shoes and being proud to wear them. Being transparent is saying, “I’m always anxious. I never feel like I fit in. I need help.” I wasn’t transparent.
Once again, I was a mess of contradiction. I was, on one hand, brave, courageous, able to be independent and out on my own. And at the same time, I was emotionally conflicted, not comfortable in my authenticity, in my own skin.
It gave me temporary self-love from the outside. But it would soon wear off because self-love from the outside, by definition, really isn’t self-love.
“Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.” —RAY BRADBURY
I compartmentalized the trauma and filtered it so that it would lie to me and keep me safe.
We felt racially and individually neutered by a philosophy built on forgetting about ourselves and birthing someone artistically acceptable. Someone whites could understand.
We found our bags and walked out. It was love. It was as potent as a first kiss or a great prayer session. The air smelled different. Oranges and blues and purples painted the sky as the sun went down. The faint tinge of incense mixed with the ocean wind. Africa was waiting for me.
I never knew love had to actually serve the two people involved, establish boundaries and communication. I thought all that just happened.
Africa was God’s playground.
“Yes, chile! That’s right. There’s a party going on right here because I’m dancing to the music of the madness in me. That’s why every time I walk down the street, my hips sashay from side to side because I’m dancing to the music of the madness in ME! And here all this time I thought we had given up our drums. But now still got ’em. They’re here. In my walk, my dress, my style, my smile, and my eyes. They’re inside here connecting me to everything and everyone that ever was. So . . . honey don’t try to label or define me, cuz I’m not who I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that
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Yeah, you can learn about birth control but . . . how to love? How to be consistent and responsible, in control, create boundaries? Hell, even making sure you had the money to access condoms or birth control pills?
Jealousy is the cruelest of emotions. The part that makes it cruel is its lack of ownership.
developed a really bad habit of eating cornstarch. My mom would eat it growing up as did many people down south. I later found out it was from a condition caused by low iron levels called pica.
“Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.” —HORACE GREELEY
“a person’s love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.”
I thought I could save them. I thought my money and success could save all of them. I learned the hard way that when there are underlying issues, money does nothing. In fact, money exacerbates the problem because it takes away the individual’s ability to be held accountable.
Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past.
One more tragedy to overcome. And once again, life continues. It keeps moving. It moves through deaths, tragedies. It doesn’t wait for you to recover or heal before hitting again.
But what did I say about life? It never stops. We always hope that it lands in our favor. At least, that’s how stories play out onscreen. There is living life for pleasure, great moments, and living life waiting for doom and gloom. Life exists somewhere in the middle.
What became apparent to me as he was dying was that we were his dream; his children and grandchildren were his dream.
Afterward everything happened fast. You have a lifetime with someone, memories—good, bad, devastating, filled with love, every freaking kind of memory—and then you see a body.
At funerals, no matter how much you think you know someone, you see a whole part of their life at the end. People sharing memories, stories that you never heard. I’m sure there were memories that would’ve surprised him because how many people make themselves vulnerable enough to share how you touched them? That’s something that you cannot always see when they’re alive.
I found out weeks later when I had the courage to look up how to comfort the dying that they don’t feel heat or cold in the end. They usually have visions of people in their life who had passed before them. They have them because they need permission to cross over. You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand.
“You can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people.” —ANNE LAMONT
God was using me to be a leader in the area where I very much felt a victim.
It is a widely held belief that dark-skinned women just don’t do it for a lot of Black men. It’s a mentality rooted in both racism and misogyny, that you have no value as a woman if you do not turn them on, if you are not desirable to them. It’s ingrained thinking, dictated by oppression.
sexualized. Not sexy. There’s a difference. I hate the word sexy, because sexy is a mask that you put on. It lives in women becoming a symbol of male desirability. It’s not authentic. It’s self-conscious. Sexualized is just another facet of you. It’s a part of your self-actualization, maybe even part of your DNA. Black women who look like me are not usually allowed to be sexualized because “we don’t think you’re attractive.”
And if we don’t think you’re attractive, then you aren’t an innately sexual being, you don’t have any anatomical sexual organs. We want to see you strong. We want to see you curse someone out. We want to see you holding a baby. Maybe you can commit a crime. We can see other values in you, but we don’t see your vulnerability and we definitely don’t see you as a woman. That view is perpetuated in our culture,
Sometimes a story is simply how YOU saw that event, how you internalized it. And sometimes the truth simply is. Simply straight-up fact. I was erasing that made-up story. I decided it was time to tell my story, as I remember it, my truth.
Our level of dreaming, of self-love and acceptance, is equal to the love, support, and permission of the images around us.
I said to myself: All I’ve got is me. And that is enough.
“Remember the love. . . . Don’t play the pain and betrayal, play the woman fighting hard to restore the love.”
now understand that life, and living it, is more about being present. I’m now aware that the not-so-happy memories lie in wait; but the hope and the joy also lie in wait.
Memory is powerful. Powerful hardships as well as powerful successes make up a life fully lived
