The Myth (In Honor of My Mother's Birthday)

Today, September 2nd, is my mother's birthday.  She would have been 55 today.  So, I've decided to share one of her writings that she wrote back in 2006.  Happy Birthday Mommy : )

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September 20,2006

There is a myth going around.  A terribly tragic myth.  It is that Black women are strong.  The truth is we are not particularly.  And yes, we can break.  Malcolm’s Mom, well they say she went crazy.   Dr. Ben  Carson’s Mom could tell when she felt like it was all too much to handle and actually signed herself into the crazy house every now and then  while raising her boys.  And no one knew until she was finished raising them.  Tupac.  Well poor Afeni, a woman brilliant enough to newly acquaint herself with law journals while in jail in order to win her way out without the advantage of an expensive  lawyer, was taking a vacation on crack cocaine while her son  treaded precariously toward manhood.  Had she known how very much he needed her I am sure she’d have considered another option.  But how can we know.  Mother’s are only human, and motherhood doesn’t come with a manual.  Hell, even Winnie turned into someone Nelson couldn’t recognize.  Enough pressure, enough heartache, enough reality over enough time can do that to a woman.   When the children all burn up in the house because the Mother left for a few minutes (for whatever reason, hell pick one)  no one says “Hey, at least she was there.”  No.  Oh, no.  They lock her up,  give any child who managed to survive over to the bowels of the “state” and voila!  No one ever poses the question: “Where was the Father?”  In the new millennium no one asks that.  The worldwide  societal and media protection of the machinations of men is astounding. Men  who wander away from being a parent , parent intermittently, parent from the soccer field or basketball court after their workday ends when it’s time to do homework and dinner, baths, kitchen cleanup, school projects etc.; men who parent from the new wife’s bed, from the office, from the golf course, from the watering holes of America, are not in question.  No one inquires after their whereabouts.  Black women are not strong.  We are special.  We defy definition.  And in our presence transcendence occurs. . . .