Clap Along If You Feel Like a Room Without a Roof.
It feels like a weight has been lifted. It feels like an abuser has been taken away and will never hurt me again. It feels like a bully is gone. It feels like someone who made me cry will never make me cry again. To me, it feels like the darkest spirit has exited the earth and gone to another realm (albeit temporary).
This week, I celebrate emancipation from evil. I am grateful for liberation of a being who tormented Black women.
I watch so many Black women walk around in a cloud of normalized but covert debilitating depression, low self-esteem, hopelessness and despair. I see Black women sacrifice everything to contribute to society through occupations, raising children, all the while masking the pain of living with insufficient resources and in a society that mocks our existence.
Then in the past two years, unfortunately, we watched another profit financially from distastefully exploiting that pain.
It is possible to communicate effectively without denigrating others’ worth.
No man has the authority to invalidate another. Existence is validation.
To be happy to be delivered from maliciousness and exploitation is a blessing that only we can understand and is completely justified.
There is nothing “average at best” about a Black woman (or any human in general). There is nothing “average at best” about women who overcame the fallout of the transatlantic slave trade, survived generations of war and social epidemics. We are resilient, exceptional, deserving of love.
If anything was learned from this, it is that collectively we need to work to salvage and maintain our self-esteem so that we may be bullet-proof in the face of the next spiritual attack. Collectively we need to apply conditions to access us (time, space, resources and bodies) and enforce them unapologetically. That is the truest definition of self-esteem. We need self-esteem because selflessness has proven not appreciated or sustainable.
I wish all of the single Black mothers a Happy Mothers’ Day, all of the Black women over 35, all of the Big Shirleys and survivors of domestic violence and child abuse love and light.
It is the beginning of the end of a dark era.
You deserve to be happy!
