On Survival

“what you talkin’ ’bout did I love you? girl, I stayed alive for you…”

-from Sula by Toni Morrison 

It never fails. Every time I return from visiting home during the holidays I come back in need of three things: 1) a stiff drink 2) a 2-3hour debriefing session with one of my sistafriends (preferably while sipping on that stiff drink) and 3) a week of reflection and writing (‘cause I can’t seem to do either one when I’m at home).  This year was no different.

The fact that I’m treated as though I never aged beyond my 12^th birthday while I’m home is not what drives me into the abyss after every Christmas holiday.  As hard as it is, I’ve learned to stomach such treatment for at least the holiday season. 

Nor is it having to put up with the indignant silence, interrogating questions and ignorant assumptions about my appearance (weight, hair, skin, clothing) and my love life. Not only am I confident enough in my appearance these days, I’ve also learned to constructively use my skill of answering a question-without really answering a question-in order to ward off all inquiring minds (and the downright nosy).

So, what is the source of my frustration and need for deep reflection after every holiday season?  It’s watching the plight of the women in my family and my community at home, that’s what.  I don’t think there is anything else that makes me feel more frustrated, more enraged, more depleted, more…helpless.

Like most Black women, I come from a long line of women who know what is to survive.  My mother, aunts, cousins and other-mothers have survived poverty, abuse, addictions, prison, low-down husbands, dead-beat fathers, foolish children, and all forms of illness, dis-ease, and tragedy.   Up against all of this, survival itself is a revolutionary act.  And without question, I am proud to be apart of this legacy of survival…that is, until I remember that while all of these women know how to survive, very few of them know how to live.

Before going any further I should say from the outset that I do not take for granted the legacy of survival among the women in my family.  They are apart of a larger narrative that chronicles Black women’s historic battle against racism, sexism and other systems of oppression.  Indeed, it is because of the ingenious survival tactics of Black women warriors like Willie Summerville, Ma Beck (both my great grandmothers), Eva Mae Summerville, Sarah Davenport (both my grandmothers), and other more notable Black women that I have been given the privilege to live. 

And yet, as I reflect now on the lives of my mother, aunts, and cousins, many of whom have spent their entire lives “waiting on God,” living from paycheck to paycheck, and putting up with abusive men for the sake of financial and emotional “security,” I find myself wondering: perhaps Black women’s legacy of survival is a double edged sword.  On the one hand, this tradition of survival is the means through which women in my family have stayed alive.  And on the other, their natural instinct to “do whatever it takes to survive” has also undermined their ability to claim their right to live with agency, choice and intentionality. 

By no means am I dismissing the systems of oppression that leave many Black women (young and old) merely surviving on the brink of disaster, depression and despair.  But after being trained in tactics to survive and withstand these oppressions, many of us don’t know what it is to move off the brink and escape to stable ground.  Even when presented with opportunities to claim our God-given right to live purposeful, passionate, fulfilling lives, we somehow find ourselves back on the brink, convinced that we have no other option. We navigate our way through life, remaining just a prayer, paycheck, relationship, or donut away from disaster.  For many Black women, the measure of their suffering determines the extent of their faith: it’s understood that the more they suffer, the more faith they have (and thus, the more “holy” they are).  Unlike our foremothers, whose survival was a means to an end, our survival is often the end itself.

For many years I’ve chided myself for being so insensitive to the women in my family. How dare I sit in judgment when my education has afforded me the privilege of being exposed to different ways of life and living?  But the truth is I’m not all that different from my mother, aunts and cousins.  Despite the schools I attended, the degrees I have, the countries I’ve visited and no matter how much I’d like to envision myself as this independent, free-thinking young woman who lives only according to her own sense of purpose and agency, there are times (more than I’d like to admit) when I find myself crouching in a corner somewhere, settling for whatever is handed to me instead of courageously taking life by the reigns.  Perhaps this is why I’m riddled with frustration and anxiety when I visit the women in my family:  in their blank stares, their fits of rage, their fanatical pronunciations of faith, in their addictions to substances, habits and other people, in their reckless search for anything that will enable them to feel alive and/or escape reality, I not only see myself, but moreover, I see women who desperately want to live.  They just don’t know how.  

*The artwork is a piece by artist Deborah Roberts.

TWIGS: reflections on locking my hair

Since cutting off my permed hair a few years ago I rarely take hair advice from my mother.  She’s the one who brags about having never worn her hair natural, let alone in the style of an afro.  She recounts this bit of information to me smugly, as though this fact is an indicator of her high standards of social respectability and class.  This used to upset me until I realized that for many women in my mother’s generation, politics of social respectability, the body, and class are all tangled up in their ideas about hair.  When I came home for the holidays with a short afro, one of the first questions my mother asked me was, “Will you promise to grow your hair back for your wedding?”  Never mind that I was single and not even dating anyone at the time.

These days my mother has given up on any hope that she will ever see her daughter with a perm again. But that never stopped her attempts to convince me to grow more hair on my head. And I continued to refuse her pleas…that is, up until 6 months ago when I started getting restless with my ‘fro and began thinking about growing my hair out.  It was then that I thought about a comment my mother made after she saw one of my sistafriend’s locs. Unable to recall the proper name of the gorgeous “ropes” of knitted hair that hung from my friend’s head, my mother said to me, “You should grow you some twigs like your friend.”  Though my feminist-black-consciousness-higher-educated self wanted to cringe, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at her use of the word “twigs.” After all, my friend is quite tall, very stately and has an aura of “deeply rooted-ness.” Kinda like a tree.

I always knew that I would eventually lock my hair but somehow my mother’s statement sealed the deal. So hear I am, finally taking my mother’s hair advice: like a tree, I’m growing some twigs.

Truth be told, I’ve always been fascinated with locs. Even when I had a perm I often had to resist the urge to stare at friends and total strangers who had them. But after starting the process of growing my own, my fascination soon abated. Locking is not so much a pesky hassle as it is a test of my patience and control, not to mention a quest into redefining my ideas about beauty and what’s attractive.  Anyone who has ever gone through the beginning stages of locking with short hair will tell you:  it is a TASK of sheer mind and will to convince yourself that it’s still possible to get ya sexy on when you have hair that looks like small worms standing straight up on top of your head.

I had plenty of exercises in deconstructing (western) norms of beauty when I went from wearing long permed hair to a short natural. But locking has presented even more of a challenge. Yes, it’s still been about deconstructing beauty norms, but locking has also been about trust. My close friends can attest that I was faithful, borderline obsessive, about getting my hair lined EVERY week when I had a short ‘fro. Not so with locs! I couldn’t shape them or neatly prune them…especially in the beginning stages. I’ve just had to trust my hair and whichever way it chooses to grow and knit itself together. Sometimes I take a look in the mirror and want to take a razor to my head and be done with it. And then there are the mornings when I wake up, slap on a favorite pair of earrings and walk out of the house looking FIERCE.

It dawns on me now that I’m locking my hair at a time in my life that is in itself filled with uncertainty, possibility and frustration. I find myself not only having to redefine and deconstruct my ideas about my self worth, but now, more than ever, I’m having to trust myself. Trust that though a lot about my life and sense of direction is vague and an utter mess, I will eventually figure some things out. And hopefully I’ll grow comfortable with the ambiguity of the things that I don’t.

Yeah, I’m like a tree alright.  I’m sinking my roots into who I am authentically and trusting that my twigs and branches will come along just fine.