After the whirlwind week between Christmas Eve and today, I found myself with the first free moments last night. The girls were passed out in my bed, tucked in after having had their first up-'til-midnight celebration of the new year's arrival and the following day's parties and good wishes tour through the neighborhood. Flicking through channels, sitting snuggled up on my couch with a blanket and a glass of wine, the quiet of the house brought the present upon me. I was no longer in my head planning for the next day, reflecting about those passed and things missed or not done, I was right there. And my birthday was coming in a few hours. I got to Thelma and Louise just as they were coming upon J.D., the young, handsome, brand new Brad Pitt, but I knew the story like I know myself. Thelma and Louise, like The Color Purple and Terms of Endearment and The English Patient, is a spot on my timeline, a moment of clarity and insight that I take pleasure in revisiting, no matter the tears and splatter that are sure to come.
And on the eve of my 45th, I looked with new eyes on my story. Every time, every single time, I love the charm, naiveté of Thelma. Her hope, her wonder, her journey (with massive shock and disappointment sure), her young soul charm and adorability. I beg her to see what I see before she gets into trouble, does something stupid, thwarts their chances and every time she does not. She is so cute, so sweet, so shiny. Oh, Thelma.
But I am Louise. Cautious, well-prepared, ordered, organized, playing the cards close to the vest. The thrill I get as this woman tidies her house before going away for what she expects will be a long weekend cannot be understated. The way she keeps herself in check, always on high alert, even when she is having fun is familiar. Her composure, her comportment, her trembling under that reserve is mine. I can be zany and funny and irreverent. I bet Louise was once a long time ago. Sometimes. Before Texas. Which she wants to avoid at all costs, does not want to revisit. It's the past and threatens to tear her wide open again.
Thelma and Louise takes us all on this journey across the gorgeous landscape of this country, showing us the beauty, the majesty, and the shifting contrasts and shadows made from that luminous glow. As these women let their masks fall, revealing themselves, their internal struggles and realizations and their skin, their human skin that they live in every day without make up, naked, we see the terrain change shape, see danger in the shadows, feel the ominous pull of life's magic and mystery as they sort out the mess of their circumstances. I have put myself in their shoes, lived vicariously through them every time. But this time I wondered, what if indeed one of these women were actually me. What if instead of two beautiful white women who find themselves with snowballing legal and emotional problems, Thelma and Louise or Thelma or Louise was a black woman. Was me. Would anyone be willing to take the journey with me? Would anyone want to come to my rescue? Would my choices be seen as heroic or tragic? Could I make that drive through the country, through the Midwest and Southwest of the United States as I tried to figure out how to right the wrongs, the mistakes and the impulses that got me into hot water? Would I go over the canyon or be knocked off long before my soul made that arc, reveled in its evolution and transcendence?
And then the tears fell harder even than usual when I realized that though the archetype, the Everyman (woman) journey, is indeed for everyone, I doubted that most would want to come along on the ride with me. It's where we find ourselves today or at least where I find myself. Deep in my heart, though I love with everything I can, I wonder if my love is reciprocated truly. In our "post-racial" America, I now wonder who wants to hear my story, any of our stories, to really listen to them without trying to place it in a specific genre, a special place, an "other" category. Does anyone believe that though our stories can be and are similar in so many ways, that we'd still like to see ourselves, be seen ourselves as part of the larger tale? That ours are not peripheral, supporting parts but starring roles too? I don't ask the questions to receive knee-jerk, fumbling reassurances. I ask because of how much it hurts me to even have to. Because the doubt has crept in and made me feel that whatever it was I thought I was leaving to my daughters has been eroded and that they will have to fight to be seen too.
I ended the year struggling to be open and available to people who were more than comfortable telling me how I feel, how people of color are/feel/act/think/behave or who told me they didn't see what I was showing them, telling them, expressing, shouting about, crying about, and were quick to walk away or shut down the dialogue with all sorts of "proof" and "post-racial" mumbo-jumbo. I lost people, let some go and allowed others to let me go when I took off my makeup, my mask, and showed my skin, my human skin, and it was real and pained and flawed, and could not be tidied. When I realized that even I, a friend or a colleague or acquaintance, could not make a convincing argument for recognition or compassion or even dialogue.
After years of trying not to "drive through Texas," not to go back to some painful truths, to reveal the scars I'd covered with my tidy, poised, secretive composure and protective stance, the circumstances had changed. I couldn't get out of this. Though I'd take many roads to try, they all still seem to end at the canyon. So here we are. I am hoping in the new year that we can talk to each other. That the seekers of the shiny and new, the naïve and the fresh can take the hands of the weary and the wary and the jaded and the wounded and forge a direction together. I hope that we are able to step back to think about and consider what each other says rather than react and attack. I hope that I am not met with theorems and postulates in place of real stories and truth and connection. I hope that we can find some kind of common group so that my story is as interesting, as worthy, as real, as true, as archetypal as any other. I want us to see ourselves in each other, longing more for what is similar, rather that foreign or strange. I want us to journey in all senses of the word--physically, emotionally, spiritually.
I love Thelma and Louise and wouldn't want to change their story. I road with them through their map, followed the lines that lead them to themselves and to their realizations and truths. I will again. Their journey has informed mine and they have inspired me to seek out hands to hold, to revisit old places and find undiscovered territory, maybe even some truth. Out there in that wildly powerful and spiritually haunting landscape, we all discover the essence of who we are. If we let ourselves.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Showing posts with label inner strength. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inner strength. Show all posts
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Monday, June 2, 2014
Black Magic Woman
A friend of mine shared a post on the Book of a video of Carlos Santana's "Black Magic Woman". As I sat in front of my computer listening, taking myself back to my childhood, I recalled how I loved that song. Loved that song because I believed that he was singing, "black, magic woman." When I listened carefully to the words, I felt stirring inside myself a truth, a truth because I heard it sung, called out, pleaded on the radio. It was the promise, the proof that there was such a thing as a "BLACK, MAGIC WOMAN" and that maybe, as I suspected, I might be magic too.
When I discovered the black, female writers--Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, Jamaica Kincaid, Maya Angelou--to start, I discovered a world that for me had been just a secret. I heard and saw and read things about myself that I'd never heard or seen. I did not grow up in the company of black folks. Yes, we had family and many close friends, but our community, what surrounded was white. I read these books with a longing, a desire, but also a realization of a hidden truth about me. These authors, along with many other artists (of music, visual art, dance, poetry, fiction writing) from all different backgrounds taught me the power of myself and that in the face of my every day loneliness, deep down there was magic.
I was loved by my grandmothers and my aunties, was held in their care. But it was the arts, from the creative spirits, seekers, seers, and black magic women and men that I first heard the call. My ballet teacher gave me the techniques, but when she asked me to feel it, to dance it with passion, I'd close my eyes and trust my magic to lead my body. When Marvin Gaye sang, "What's going on?" I heard something I'd never considered before and heard it like a rush of adrenaline in my veins. I saw Judith Jamison with Alvin Ailey as a girl because she'd to college with my mother and invited us to watch her and meet the dancers. She is a presence to anyone, but to a small girl chasing the muse, she was a giant in every sense of the word. I sat at the knee of any performer on television and closed my eyes listening to orchestration, composition, lyricists who said what my heart believed it was dreaming all on its own.
What I loved as a child was that though I found all of these people beautiful, otherworldly, and "gifted by God" (an expression I heard so often with the church ladies and aunties) they were not all traditionally beautiful; they were more. Their beauty came from another world. They were not charmed as much as possessed. Possessed of spirit, talent, direction, and passion. The light and energy radiated. Navigating the mainstream and the shadow world was done in secret and done every day. I could not articulate the how and the why, I just felt it.
When Maya Angelou passed this week, I was left with a sensation similar to the moments I'd learned of my grandmothers' passings. Maya Angelou I'd come upon quietly. No one handed me a book and told me there were secrets in there. But I'd heard her speak with that deep, knowing drawl resonating and vibrating with the power of a lion's roar but as direct and sharp as a crossbow, as humble and loving as a whisper that tickles the tiny hairs on one's ear, and as sure a voice I'd ever known. I believed her and trusted her. I loved her and everything she brought to me. Everything she promised me just by existing and not surviving, but thriving. She was BLACK. MAGIC. WOMAN. And she told me I was too. I could hardly believe her so she reminded me again and again.
With her passing, the breath was knocked from me and tears fell involuntarily and uncontrollably. I felt strongly that I should absorb her faith in me, in all of the black magic women. Women who need to give themselves permission to do their magic, to try their wares, to release their tethered souls, to soar. By her example and her wisdom and her guidance, there was no way for me to deny the possibilities. I see her dancing to that song, giving in with abandon, being so remarkably human and otherworldly at the same time. Dare I do it too?
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
When I discovered the black, female writers--Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, Jamaica Kincaid, Maya Angelou--to start, I discovered a world that for me had been just a secret. I heard and saw and read things about myself that I'd never heard or seen. I did not grow up in the company of black folks. Yes, we had family and many close friends, but our community, what surrounded was white. I read these books with a longing, a desire, but also a realization of a hidden truth about me. These authors, along with many other artists (of music, visual art, dance, poetry, fiction writing) from all different backgrounds taught me the power of myself and that in the face of my every day loneliness, deep down there was magic.
I was loved by my grandmothers and my aunties, was held in their care. But it was the arts, from the creative spirits, seekers, seers, and black magic women and men that I first heard the call. My ballet teacher gave me the techniques, but when she asked me to feel it, to dance it with passion, I'd close my eyes and trust my magic to lead my body. When Marvin Gaye sang, "What's going on?" I heard something I'd never considered before and heard it like a rush of adrenaline in my veins. I saw Judith Jamison with Alvin Ailey as a girl because she'd to college with my mother and invited us to watch her and meet the dancers. She is a presence to anyone, but to a small girl chasing the muse, she was a giant in every sense of the word. I sat at the knee of any performer on television and closed my eyes listening to orchestration, composition, lyricists who said what my heart believed it was dreaming all on its own.
What I loved as a child was that though I found all of these people beautiful, otherworldly, and "gifted by God" (an expression I heard so often with the church ladies and aunties) they were not all traditionally beautiful; they were more. Their beauty came from another world. They were not charmed as much as possessed. Possessed of spirit, talent, direction, and passion. The light and energy radiated. Navigating the mainstream and the shadow world was done in secret and done every day. I could not articulate the how and the why, I just felt it.
When Maya Angelou passed this week, I was left with a sensation similar to the moments I'd learned of my grandmothers' passings. Maya Angelou I'd come upon quietly. No one handed me a book and told me there were secrets in there. But I'd heard her speak with that deep, knowing drawl resonating and vibrating with the power of a lion's roar but as direct and sharp as a crossbow, as humble and loving as a whisper that tickles the tiny hairs on one's ear, and as sure a voice I'd ever known. I believed her and trusted her. I loved her and everything she brought to me. Everything she promised me just by existing and not surviving, but thriving. She was BLACK. MAGIC. WOMAN. And she told me I was too. I could hardly believe her so she reminded me again and again.
With her passing, the breath was knocked from me and tears fell involuntarily and uncontrollably. I felt strongly that I should absorb her faith in me, in all of the black magic women. Women who need to give themselves permission to do their magic, to try their wares, to release their tethered souls, to soar. By her example and her wisdom and her guidance, there was no way for me to deny the possibilities. I see her dancing to that song, giving in with abandon, being so remarkably human and otherworldly at the same time. Dare I do it too?
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Sugar, Spice, and everything fierce
Little girls. The hard part is raising them. The crazy part is having to search and scour and work through all the messages that are being sent at their little hearts and minds. The wicked part is trying to work through my own politics, my own feelings, my own shortcomings, fears, desires and lead them to their own paths.
I want to raise my girls stronger, more self-aware, and centered than I ever was. I want them to know their strengths--emotional, physical, and spiritual, their beauty, their wisdom, their intuition, intelligence, and their magic. But I also want them to use their powers for good and not evil. I, like so many parents of girls my age, love the fierce, young things out there, images of girl power that are not as obviously sexist, racist, misogynistic as images from the past. My girls believe they can do anything though they often need some coaxing to see the application of this mantra. All things new are met with a little apprehension and fear and some embarrassment about being made a fool of by their peers real and imagined. I sit with that part as it runs in me too, but as a woman, I am able to throw myself into the new, knowing the rewards often outweigh the risks.
I love almost anything that lets little girls and women high five themselves at the show of strength, power, and confidence, that shows the second sex flexing all its muscle--physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. I like girls in real life and fiction that challenge the status quo, that bring it, find themselves alienated because they are so misunderstood in their desire to march to the beat of their own damned beatbox. I believe that leadership comes with strength and compassion and I teach my girls how to lead themselves. I have told them to lead by example and others will follow but I do not know that that is true. Sometimes it seems like the sassy wheel gets the grease.
There are so many other reinforcements for an aggressive show of strength--girl bullying, the "I don't care," the blasé response to a life lived with just 6 or 7 years under the belt and parents' oblivious acceptance or ignorance of them. Mine see wonder in everything, Believe that every image seen will enhance the dreams in their minds, every experience had will feed the possibilities. They are open to the idea of everyone's joy and believe there is enough to go around for everyone. Sure, they fight like heck when they get locked in the house on a cold day or a boring morning where Mommy does not jump up and show them the fireworks, but they cut their teeth at home where the sparing is playful at best, chock full of Mommy-shouting, teachable moments at worst. Like two little lion cubs they spar and jab and resist and pounce and I call from the other room, "That's too much. Not like that. Don't say words just to be cruel, just to hurt. Say them to make your point."
Mine know the first of the Four Agreements because I say it so often. "Be impeccable with your word." It's kind of like "use your words" but with intention and conviction behind them. Know that what you say or do definitely has a reaction in the world and who the heck wants a reaction that hurts someone else. When little girls are cruel, abusive, short-tempered with others, I often wonder if their parents have goaded them on, cheered them, encouraged them by telling them that they are strong, singular, fierce. I wonder if the girls long for a tribe of like-minded chicas or if they believe that to be a strong girl or woman one must do it alone. I wonder why compassion gets taken out of the equation when one is being prepped for greatness.
Yesterday, after a dance class, I spent a good hour talking with some mommy-friends about raising children and girls in particular. My parents involved themselves very little in my social development and I navigated using clues from television, playground politics, and bearing witness to schoolyard hierarchies. I was nervous, but found that humor and revealing very little about my real feelings was helpful. Only I knew how trying it was to find my way through this maze and I grew a thick skin. I shored up and developed a hard shell to protect my gooey insides. But what for the girls who appear quiet, but really have a silent roar? Those that are nurturing a strong character, who are watching and mindful and intelligent and sharp? Who don't know how or won't fight for the top of the pyramid but could surely get there on their own strength.
The narcissistic side of me hopes that my girls are tiny avatars of all my good qualities with daring, commitment, and perseverance in extra measure. I hope that when they are doing something that makes them stand out, either because they are great or not so, that they keep doing it anyway because they love it. I hope that the voices--inside their heads and from other littles who have already taken in the sad, scary, tiny messages delivered on a pink tray to little girls--can be ignored and they can blaze hot, fiery paths of their own making. Or even lay tiny little stones, like Gretel and her brother Hansel, on their path to find their way. I don't care how they do it, just want it to be their very own.
My girls are sweet, easy playmates, sugary and gooey and lovey with enough character and drive to spice up all interaction with them. The fierceness will come as their confidence strengthens and they feel safer navigating knowing that I have their backs and support every effort they make towards self-discovery and self-improvement and self-love. I'm in it with them.
Those sassy, precocious, sophisticated, modern kids who call adults by their first names and treat children and adults alike with the same snarky attitude, who are already bored, unmoved by the real miracles of life, the joys, the highs, who hide the miserable, scary lows, who have even us fooled that "they got this" when they are way too young to GET this and just need to be parented, to be given limits, to have consequences to face, need guidance. They need us to help them find their way to their best selves, to their potential, and to do it without having to break others down to the quick. They run this town and they know it. We let them tell us what to do, talk back, assault us, call us names and then wonder why they just can't seem to connect with others.
Fierce is not mean or biting or cruel. It's not manipulative or controlling. It doesn't make others feel less than so that one can feel whole. We know this, but they may not. May not be able to read through the pages of confusing messages directed at them or lives lived vicariously through them. I don't want my children to be too heavy on the sugar, so sweet and kind and easy-going that they give up their strength. But the healthy snack to that meal is not snark or sassiness. It's the true power--self-reliance, self-love, intelligence, empathy, and compassion. Sugar and spice and everything nice? I don't know about that. But crystallizing that inner awesome, seeing it in others too, and letting everyone be led by their own star? I can get with that.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I want to raise my girls stronger, more self-aware, and centered than I ever was. I want them to know their strengths--emotional, physical, and spiritual, their beauty, their wisdom, their intuition, intelligence, and their magic. But I also want them to use their powers for good and not evil. I, like so many parents of girls my age, love the fierce, young things out there, images of girl power that are not as obviously sexist, racist, misogynistic as images from the past. My girls believe they can do anything though they often need some coaxing to see the application of this mantra. All things new are met with a little apprehension and fear and some embarrassment about being made a fool of by their peers real and imagined. I sit with that part as it runs in me too, but as a woman, I am able to throw myself into the new, knowing the rewards often outweigh the risks.
I love almost anything that lets little girls and women high five themselves at the show of strength, power, and confidence, that shows the second sex flexing all its muscle--physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. I like girls in real life and fiction that challenge the status quo, that bring it, find themselves alienated because they are so misunderstood in their desire to march to the beat of their own damned beatbox. I believe that leadership comes with strength and compassion and I teach my girls how to lead themselves. I have told them to lead by example and others will follow but I do not know that that is true. Sometimes it seems like the sassy wheel gets the grease.
There are so many other reinforcements for an aggressive show of strength--girl bullying, the "I don't care," the blasé response to a life lived with just 6 or 7 years under the belt and parents' oblivious acceptance or ignorance of them. Mine see wonder in everything, Believe that every image seen will enhance the dreams in their minds, every experience had will feed the possibilities. They are open to the idea of everyone's joy and believe there is enough to go around for everyone. Sure, they fight like heck when they get locked in the house on a cold day or a boring morning where Mommy does not jump up and show them the fireworks, but they cut their teeth at home where the sparing is playful at best, chock full of Mommy-shouting, teachable moments at worst. Like two little lion cubs they spar and jab and resist and pounce and I call from the other room, "That's too much. Not like that. Don't say words just to be cruel, just to hurt. Say them to make your point."
Mine know the first of the Four Agreements because I say it so often. "Be impeccable with your word." It's kind of like "use your words" but with intention and conviction behind them. Know that what you say or do definitely has a reaction in the world and who the heck wants a reaction that hurts someone else. When little girls are cruel, abusive, short-tempered with others, I often wonder if their parents have goaded them on, cheered them, encouraged them by telling them that they are strong, singular, fierce. I wonder if the girls long for a tribe of like-minded chicas or if they believe that to be a strong girl or woman one must do it alone. I wonder why compassion gets taken out of the equation when one is being prepped for greatness.
Yesterday, after a dance class, I spent a good hour talking with some mommy-friends about raising children and girls in particular. My parents involved themselves very little in my social development and I navigated using clues from television, playground politics, and bearing witness to schoolyard hierarchies. I was nervous, but found that humor and revealing very little about my real feelings was helpful. Only I knew how trying it was to find my way through this maze and I grew a thick skin. I shored up and developed a hard shell to protect my gooey insides. But what for the girls who appear quiet, but really have a silent roar? Those that are nurturing a strong character, who are watching and mindful and intelligent and sharp? Who don't know how or won't fight for the top of the pyramid but could surely get there on their own strength.
The narcissistic side of me hopes that my girls are tiny avatars of all my good qualities with daring, commitment, and perseverance in extra measure. I hope that when they are doing something that makes them stand out, either because they are great or not so, that they keep doing it anyway because they love it. I hope that the voices--inside their heads and from other littles who have already taken in the sad, scary, tiny messages delivered on a pink tray to little girls--can be ignored and they can blaze hot, fiery paths of their own making. Or even lay tiny little stones, like Gretel and her brother Hansel, on their path to find their way. I don't care how they do it, just want it to be their very own.
My girls are sweet, easy playmates, sugary and gooey and lovey with enough character and drive to spice up all interaction with them. The fierceness will come as their confidence strengthens and they feel safer navigating knowing that I have their backs and support every effort they make towards self-discovery and self-improvement and self-love. I'm in it with them.
Those sassy, precocious, sophisticated, modern kids who call adults by their first names and treat children and adults alike with the same snarky attitude, who are already bored, unmoved by the real miracles of life, the joys, the highs, who hide the miserable, scary lows, who have even us fooled that "they got this" when they are way too young to GET this and just need to be parented, to be given limits, to have consequences to face, need guidance. They need us to help them find their way to their best selves, to their potential, and to do it without having to break others down to the quick. They run this town and they know it. We let them tell us what to do, talk back, assault us, call us names and then wonder why they just can't seem to connect with others.
Fierce is not mean or biting or cruel. It's not manipulative or controlling. It doesn't make others feel less than so that one can feel whole. We know this, but they may not. May not be able to read through the pages of confusing messages directed at them or lives lived vicariously through them. I don't want my children to be too heavy on the sugar, so sweet and kind and easy-going that they give up their strength. But the healthy snack to that meal is not snark or sassiness. It's the true power--self-reliance, self-love, intelligence, empathy, and compassion. Sugar and spice and everything nice? I don't know about that. But crystallizing that inner awesome, seeing it in others too, and letting everyone be led by their own star? I can get with that.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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