I always have something to say. Even when I am not saying anything I still have something to say. But there are times, like now, when the thought of opening my mouth threatens to release the hiccuping, sniveling, water running in the mouth torrent of tears and screams that I hear only in my dream state because I don't dare care or feel as much as all that in my real life. Not if I can help it. Not if I want to survive.
I am a woman of color (WOC) until I am black, really black. A little black girl does not often find herself with a voice, with the protection of everything and everyone. A little black girl is scared and only sometimes believes that anyone gives a damn. At least this little black girl. We know that very early on. Even when the people who love us tell us we are important and special and valuable (and that does not always happen), we can see. We can hear. We listen. We sense. We're low on the totem pole. A woman of color gets to talk about her perspective, share the stories of her time as a little black or brown or yellow girl, as she developed into a woman who took control of her destiny or found herself crushed by the weight of its reality. When I am a woman of color, people who want to, who dare to, listen to my perspective, want to know what I think or believe, hope they want to know my story, what I have lived, what I experience. As a woman of color I feel expert in my experience, strong, protective, prepared. But deep down, I am still a little black girl. Scared, tired, fragile, strong, endlessly hopeful, and both shamelessly fearful and fearless.
I have been unable to write or speak or even utter a gasp about the girls, kidnapped, stolen in Nigeria by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. I knew, even as a young girl, that if I went missing, no one would come looking for me. And every time I tried to disappear, ran away, hid in the closet or the attic, even my parents did not stop what they were doing to find me. Everything I have ever known about my status did nothing to reinforce my sense of worth or value. Little black girls were not searched for, missed when they were gone. Yes, this was a child's perspective, and yes, they, we are valuable to many, but consider that the stories that really got the public moved to action were those of pretty little white girls stolen in the night. Rarely did I see a story about a small black child that raised everyone's consciousness, concern, pulled the community together to talk about the sanctity of childhood or innocence. I knew inside, just knew that the general population was not concerned for my virtue, my safety, or my innocence. No one who looked like me starred in the rescue story.
So when I learned they were gone, my heart sank. I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut. And then my thoughts turned to them. Taken in the dark, scared to death, wondering what would become of them, how would the people who loved them find them, where were they going. I imagined them looking for clues on the path, a way to remember to find their way back, probably knowing they would not go back. At least not the way they came. I thought of the fucking cowardice it took to punish people, communities by raging assaults on young girls and women. I thought of the absolutely sickness of that kind of power play and how the eyes of those girls and their minds and their hearts and their bodies will be changed forever. And then I learned that I was late to the Intel. They'd been gone days when I first heard about the abduction. Many tuned in later to find that the girls had been missing for weeks.
I could not conjure up in the recesses of my mind, the most horrible fear, most alienating, soul crushing, dream stealing terror that is happening right now. They were gone for days before the world got enraged, got upset, was called to action. Taken in the night at their school by a group that rejects Westernization and education of girls and women. Their response to this affront was to kidnap the girls and, depending on who you are asking, sell them into marriage, lead them through the brutal terrain of the forest, or torment and repeatedly rape them, traumatizing and terrorizing them and leaving their families in complete anguish. Each possibility more horrifying than the next. That the possibilities are more than likely probabilities has left me supremely enraged.
Their mothers and families left to imagine the unimaginable, crying in the night, feeling the psychic pull of their children and having no idea how or where to find them. There is talk of international aid, perhaps a trade with Boko Haram for militants being held as prisoners. There are rallies and writing campaigns, and calls for action. I support those. But what I cannot get out of my mind, even when I close my eyes, are the faces I have conjured of those girls, their eyes staring at me, making our connection real. It is so easy, especially in the modern world, when the threats are not immediate or put one in imminent danger, to turn one's head. But I feel their presence and their fear and their life force.
There but by the grace of God go I. I see myself in their faces. Read my own name next to theirs. The horror lies in the absolute randomness of being unfortunate to be chosen for such violence and assault. A girl in the world learns these things. That upon her body and to her mind will be done great damage and violence in the name of anything and nothing. How I wish I could make them feel safe, secure, complete after this. Some have escaped and I have read that some may have died on the journey but many will have an "after this." What that is, where that is, how that is, we don't yet know. What serves as a metaphor for so many of us, girls in the world, lost in the dark, stolen innocence, is the reality for many more.
Hiding in the closet or in the attic, I remember my pounding heart. Its steady thunder keeping me tethered to the present, kept me from fleeing to my mind, my dreams, my outer space, disappearing place. I feel their hearts beat. All of ours. And I hope these girls are reunited with their families and brought home soon. Say their names out loud so you believe that they are as real as you are. Call out to them so they feel your hope and your rage and their strength and your love. The little black girl inside of me is screaming out, clawing at the walls, begging to be heard, to be rescued, to be healed. The WOC is prepared to be steely and strong enough to support others, to hold them up in body and spirit, to live in a place where being a girl in the world, a black girl in the world can again be wondrous and awesome, not dangerous and threatening.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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.
