I can feel myself moving slowly. It feels like I am underwater. It is not quite panic. It is, perhaps, inertia ... stillness - the kind of suspension of thought and movement that manifests in times of powerlessness. Trauma studies suggest that stillness is one of many survival response possibilities. Somehow, sometimes, being very still can be a defiant act of resistance - of self preservation. And, sometimes, stillness is a violence against others... My stillness has simultaneously kept me safe and framed violent realities for people around me including ... if not certainly... my children.
Yesterday one of my children, who is reflecting on their life while building a reality for their spouse and children, sent me a series of long communications. This is not a child who regularly engages me with any depth. That is their self-preservation - their silence. I do not attempt to disrupt their saftey, nor question their silence. Yesterday, they broke that silence. It was not easy for either of us. I am not sure that I received well, nor responded correctly. My child's foundational critique of me as a human and as a mother is a critique of my stillness, my silence, my inaction and my suppression of their and my own racial identities ... my fundamental erasure of our performances of blackness.
My child is correct.
It was not the best day for those communications, emotionally... I had very little bandwidth after facing a day filled with systemic racism and misogyny in my professional life and deep saddness and solitude in my personal life. All of which I was responding to with stillness - with silence. These painful communications were a gift without measure. My child had invited me in to be part of their waking up, their vocalizing, their breaking free... My child had reached out to me to bear witness to their growth as a person and a parent and to be a signator on the realities of my failures as a mother as they came to life for them.
My child was right. I told my child that they were right. I hold and believe that my child is right. Not in some self-deprecating way, but in a naming way. This articulation of a moment, in our lives, where we were crafted by each others hands... by each other's memories - memories of violence, neglect, abuse, anger, disappearing, and disappointment. This articulation necessarily is the end of a chapter of stillness and silence for both of us. This is a moment of possibility, but the possibility lies on the other side of this hard thing - this tearing.
I apologized - yet again in response and reaction and not in the ways I desire ... ways that flow out of my own self-reflection ... ways that result from my doing the labor of realization and reparation instead of waiting for my children to create space or command apology. But I apologized. It was a gracious thing that my child gave me the opportunity to receive and apologize. It was all at once soul-healing and spirit-damning.
My child read a facebook post where I shared the good work and writing of my dear friend Dr. Ernest Gibson III* where Dr. Gibson was accounting his witnessing of the pain and violence of black silence. Dr. Gibson's writing struck me so deeply, as it always does, that I had a physio-emotional response. This was deep for me. Dr. Gibson's writing forced me to confront the realities where I resort to silence over almost any other means of defense or self-preservation. The revelation made me feel sad, small, invisible and free. I wept ... for me and for black people who know that silence is the only way to survive spaces that were never meant to hold our abundance, our intellect, our bodies ... our light.
My child's message said, in opposition to my sense of revelation and freedom, that the post, my posting how this idea of black stillness resonated with me, hurt ... that they were harmed ... by my ongoing evolution into my own blackness. My child said they have to stay off facebook because encountering my very public accounting of this journey is so painful and upsetting... rage evoking... undoing. My child's message was that they wished that I had been this kind of black - a revolutionary, unapologetic black - while raising them ... my children. My child's message wept for the loss of their own blackness at my insistence. My child wished I had embraced blackness, and them as black, rather than suppressing the very identity that I lead so mightily with now. My child is so irrevocably right.
I thought I was saving their lives.
I am not sure that this is a violence, a trauma, that can be overcome. I have no idea how to heal my children.
I thought I was saving their lives.
My white adoptive mother and her married boyfriend hated my blackness. I always knew on some level that I hated my blackness. I understood my self-loathing as a response to how other people shaped blackness, my own blackness, as something to be suppressed or eradicated. I knew this was wrong. There has been a life long struggle, a pushing against, the social conditioning that said I was wrong - my black body was wrong. When that pushing against welled up and found its way outside of my skin - when I actively resisted racism and the erasure of my blackness - I was beaten. Stillness was the only way to survive.
I am 5'7. I am 200 lbs. I am broad shouldered. I am muscular. I am a presence. I cannot hide. I cannot be invisible. I can only be still. If I am still, I am not terrifying. If people are not afraid of me, I will not die.
But. There are so many ways to die.
That is what I taught my children. To be still. To not die.
I would not allow my children to play with toy guns. I would not allow my children to speak dialectical english. I would not allow my children to grow out their afros. I would not allow my children to sag their pants. I would not allow my children to listen to rap and hip hop. I would not allow my children to watch BET. I taught my children to be still. To be silent.
I thought I was saving their lives.
I was wrong. I was killing them, with intention. I was making them small. I was making them hate themselves. I was making them like me.
As Dr. Gibson tells us, black stillness is death. It is a death we pass on to our children. Black stillness is the death of black spirit. Black stillness is an expectation, it is our collateral, it is our admission fee, it is our social and racial contract. To survive, read - succeed, participate, advance, exist, live, be - we must be still.
Black stillness is survival. Black silence is violence. Black erasure is death.
My child's message said that they had seen, and are proud, of my professional and scholarly evolution and success. They are proud to talk about me to others - the professional me. But my child is clear, and correct, in talking about the ways in which none of what I have done in my academic life translated to their development as children - as black children.
The genealogical severing from self is a matrilineal inheritance in my family. Like cancer or cooking, this severing from self ... from self-realization ... self-love ... self-advocacy ... self-wholeness - is an inheritance that kills.
I am not certain what the next steps are. I have received a diagnosis, through the welling up of my child's sick and dying spirit. And, while I want to shrink away from it - to be still, I know that hiding from this is simply not possible if I want to save my children and my grand-children from a life of deadly silences and self-destruction I must face this. Stillness will not fix this. Stillness will only expedite death.
This is operable. Death is not imminent. Violence need not be expected. Abundance is possible.
I hope my child continues to be honest and open with me. I hope I can continue to receive. I hope we can both heal. But, if only one of us can heal ... recover ... live ... I choose my child.
more soon...
*Dr. Ernest Gibson III is the author of the newly released Salvific Manhood: James Baldwin's Novelization of Male Intimacy (Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality) now available on Amazon
