This is for every mama doing her absolute best. Who simply shows up and continues to try… no matter the hand dealt. This is a reminder that your best can look different on any given day… and it’s no less impressive or praise worthy.
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Womanhood
I was barely in my 20’s the first time I realized that one of my dearest friendships had lost its familiarity. Having spent high school within a clique of girls… the ranks began to fizzle out, and going off to college was slowly shifting my views. Armed with a bunch of feelings I didn’t have the emotional intelligence to express, I just knew that the friendship began to feel more hard landing than safety net.
As a first hand participant in a love story that had its share of nosedives, I know better than to believe that love and pain are mutually exclusive. I also know that the world’s standard for love will have me summoning the magical intervention of Disney princesses and fairy Godmothers instead of recognizing my trauma responses and how they play a hand in the partners I’ve chosen and/or how I show up in relationships.
To be clear, this is not written in attempt to victim blame or relieve abusive partners of accountability. However, this is a call to self-reflect on whether your default setting has you predisposed to foolishness. It seems wholly unrealistic to enter a union expecting wellness when your habits, mental space and capacity for engaging in the key components of a relationship stem from a broken and unhealed place. Ask me how I know.
There are nights when the fabric needs to hug my body in order for me to feel like a sex siren, because feeling like a sex siren is still affirming and necessary. Because I never had issues feeling sexy before Zora, and being able to obtain that feeling shouldn't be so fleeting now. I'm a mom, but that hasn't altered my ability to exude sexiness. Hell, it should have multiplied it.
Lately, I've been feeling a lot of the body consciousness that I had when posing for this photo almost two years back. However, my past self did something my current self is grateful for. This photo reminds me that even when I am not fearless, I can be damn brave. I am damn brave, y'all. As affirmed by sister friend Sasha Banks, "If I am afraid, I will do it afraid. Courage is not beyond me."
Never mind that strong, black woman is a redundant term in and of itself. Strong Black Woman (SBW) Syndrome dictates that I should be able to handle it all, on my own. SBW don't need help. They don't need counsel or guidance. They don't need nurturing or affection, because they can court, support, and heal themselves. They've got God to get them through and make ways when there aren't any. That is the gift and the curse of being a SBW.
I was scared and feeling a mild sense of panic. I had been wanting a boy, because I love the doting, mother and son dynamic. Though I had yet to acknowledge it, I also wanted a boy because ignorance really is blissful.
I don’t know much about being a man. Though not at all true, I rationalized that my unfamiliarity would equate to less things to worry about.
"The effort it requires. Every woman you see nursing didn't happily waltz into an easy rhythm w/ her feeding baby. Zora latched well from the beginning. That doesn't negate the 3 painful weeks it took for my breasts to adjust or the horror stories I heard prior to that created self doubt. Never mind engorgement, blocked ducts, pumping, timing alcohol consumption, & going back to work."