I was privileged to meet with a colleague today who has retired from her institution. This stunning human - a pioneer in women, gender and sexuality studies as well as a huge contributor to race, gender and sexuality discourse - filled up my office and my life just by stepping through the door. She is diminutive in size. She is slight of frame, light of skin color, blue eyed, Louisiana Creole fabulous. She radiates magic and light. She reminded me immediately of a few other such humans that have graced my life since leaving Upstate New York. I sat there in awe of her power and intellect. I was vibrating on a level that I have not experienced since moving to Maine. I felt loved, homed, validated, understood, visible, and comforted in her presence. We were only together for 55 minutes.
During our conversation, I shared the resonance and familiar - familial - energies that I was receiving ... we talked about how for 46 years of my life I had not maternal nor sisterly black women in my life. I told her how black women, in particular, had rejected me for a very long time. I celebrated with her that now my life is filled with loving, intentional, mentoring and mothering black women - some of whom I am related to.
My colleague shared with me that, in her life, she had experienced an abundance of "mothers and aunties" who held her over time. She had a continuum of relationships that she could see and touch and access. I wondered who I would be had I been afforded, even temporarily, such black mothering and sisterly relationships. Again, I am so very thankful I have them now. I am amazed that they are growing at a rate that leaves me breathless. And... I am saddened for the little black girl in me who needed "mothers and aunties" so mightily during the hardest, darkest, times in my life.
I realize that the disruption is not only mine. My children would have benefited greatly from having black "mothers and aunties" who understood their black child - their black lived experiences. What would it have been like for them to have people who received them wholly and did not try to socialize or assimilate them into whiter versions of themselves. I can only imagine how much sooner they would have arrived at their own possibility if I had the guidance of other mothers of black children holding me in the way my colleague describes her communal "mothers and aunties" holding her.
I wonder. Would I be this empty? Would I feel this lost? I also wonder, if my genetic mother had communal "mothers and aunties", might she have kept me? Would they have tried to help her raise her daughter? Would I know her? Would I have known my mother?
This particular point of disruption rubs raw on my skin today. I have blisters on my heart and tears of fire in my eyes. I feel rage. I feel abandoned. I am abandoned all over again. That all of these people, the communal "mothers and aunties" - the women who should have taught me about my hair, skin, nursing, cooking, reading, ciphering, processing the world through the chains we are given and flying when the wind is free - they are lost to me. I miss them.
I miss the stories that start with "well your mama ..." and "back when we were kids...". I miss the voices that could have told me "not to" and "not him". I miss the hands that would have wiped away tears. I miss the hands that would have lowered a switch. I miss the hands that would have fed me and my babies when my [mother] could not or chose not to. I miss the hands that would have been knotted in prayer. I miss the people that would have been praying for me. Maybe someone is praying for me.
This realization makes me angry. This realization makes me appreciative. I am now surrounded by intellectual "mothers and aunties". I have black women, when they see me, see my *brilliance* and my small, black, abandoned child and they love us both. They let me sit too close to them. They let me call them mama and auntie. They call me daughter and niece. They let me cry my frustrations and gratitude. They let me talk too much. They let me in to their warmth, their secrets, their silences. They let me receive - inherit - breathe. I don't know if they even know they are doing it. It is just how they ARE... it is what they do - communal mothers and aunties - they give the very last bit of themselves to us so that we can survive.
They are healing me.
They are sustaining my life.
They are the deepest part of my loss.
They are the disruption.
More soon...
Baby Girl
