“No need to run from heartache….”

If you are over 18, you have had your heart broken. By the time you get to 40, it’s not even heart break in it’s same form. Things will break your heart that aren’t just about unrequited love… your capability being questioned, your worth being doubted, your intellect being taken advantage of… based on the many characters you play in your life. I had been thinking about my last real heartbreak, and how I got past it. And one thing was for sure, that having to sit in the middle of that while still being needed was hard as hell.

There is a real need to give your all to your own healing. Yet the reality of being unable because someone else you have committed yourself to, your child, never stops needing you! And while both parents can surely understand, the nurturing that mother’s do, that we are often struggling to give ourselves, especially in a moment of heartbreak… becomes like pulling a knife out of a wound. You risk bleeding out or internal damage that can’t be reversed.

Relationships

There is NOTHING harder than coming together in partnership with another human… fulfilling and worth it perhaps, but difficult! So when we find time to make ourselves available to a man, it is with intention and purpose… that most of us make clear from jump! Whether long term commitment to marriage, no ones mother is trying to date any man’s ass forever and a day. So they put in work, to woo us, but eventually their representative goes back into hiding and their true self emerges. Undependable, unavailable (emotionally or otherwise), untrustworthy, and just plain ole unnecessary! True to form it’s only once we have expended hours worth of time and invested a heart full of emotion… and we find our hearts being chipped away at like delicate fine china.

“Spreading fast and there’s no cure.”

Professionally

Being black, female and intelligent is to be constantly questioned by idiots afraid you might outshine them. Your valedictorian and honor cords, plaques on the wall, the As and Bs in classes that they could only hope to pass, and your brain full of knowledge of everything from Socrates and the Pythagorean theory, to the Bantu expansion and the effect in colonialism on African kingdoms… minimized in the presence of privilege. Having to fight for opportunity, promotion, equal pay, diversity, and inclusion. Being accused, ignored, spoken down to, and talked over. Even being mistreated by your own… crabs in a bucket. Having your intellectual success sabotaged and your mental acuity demeaned is the ultimate sign of disrespect, but when paired with systematic racism and sexism, it’s a knife to the temple.

“It’s gonna get ya…”

Socially

Who you calling a bitch…

I tried to dance it away…

I need freedom too…

Why am I alive anyway?

I am not your expectations…

I just want a chance to fly…

We gave you birth…

U-N-I-T-Y …

The plight of a sista in today’s world is to be both celebrated and denigrated. We see ourselves at the top, yet know the very real pain that being at the top reveals. This country still harbors hate towards us, because we are both female and Black. We want to celebrate ourselves but not so loudly that we’ll have to hear that hate. What a troubled spot to be placed in… yet, we continue to be dope as absolute fuck! It’s amazing actually… to be this fine, this smart, this amazing, this successful… in this body. Once, and still by many, only considered a portion of the privileged. Yet we rise from the ashes, but not without burns and scars. Both upon our flesh and upon our hearts. It’s both heartbreaking and fantastic to be a Black woman in the United States in 2018.

“Gonna get ya for sure!”

We need space and room to heal, to talk, to scream, to cry, to celebrate, to rejoice… to be open and to feel … but when LJ has a fever, Megan cannot get her Barbie’s head back on, Travis just got suspended, and Kennedy needs a new dress for homecoming… or someone just needs your time… mothers often don’t get that space and time. All mothers. I only speak from my experience as a Black woman, but I’m well aware that any woman living in this day and this political age is living in a scary time warp. Many of us are fighting Patriarchal Satan in the flesh, and when you add the other roles we play, including mother as the star of the show, self-care can be a daunting task. A broken heart doesn’t heal with crazy glue… only time heals that type of wound. When a broken hearted mother falls… all the Kings horses and all the King’s men can’t put her back together. Only Time and Forgiveness…

And that often feels like you are neglecting the very people who need you most… taking the time you need to heal your pain and closing off just enough to do the introspection you need to forgive yourself for allowing the pain and to forgive the source of your pain for the disappointment. But rest assured, no one can drink from an empty cup, and if you don’t first fill your cup, with self-love, forgiveness, space, time, solitude, and patience… there is nothing left to give! Be gentle with yourself, and soon you’ll start to see yourself as the Wonder(ful) Woman your children know you to be.

“She got it goin on!”

Lyrics by New Edition, N.E. Heartbreak