I made it out alright.
I made it out alright...
Or did I??
Just read an article that talks about the complicated relationships of black mothers and daughters and it sparked all types of feels. I felt like I was reading my entire life right there in that article. It's crazy thinking that you are the only one who has gone through something, to later realize that it's so much more common than you thought. This is an even more sobering reality knowing that so many black women are walking around broken at the hands of their mother.
Now of course, we can say that all parents did the very best that they could. I mean, parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual, after all. So how do we learn to parent? By emulating what we've seen. But sadly, that doesn't make it healthy. You might be wondering what exactly I'm referring to, so let me give you some insight into my life.
***Trigger Warning***
The Abuse
I have vivid memories of sitting in my 5th grade classroom being addressed by Child Protective Services. They were talking to us about speaking up if someone was hurting us. Now that I think about it, I'm not really sure why they were there. Maybe it was customary, or maybe they had a tip. But nonetheless, I was sitting there weighing my options. If I say something, they might be able to help me. But if they can't, how can I ever go home? This time she might kill me for real. I sat there with fresh welts on my body from the night before.
See, I had this crazy pattern every school year that pushed her over the edge. I went to a small Lutheran school that had very high standards. If we didn't do our homework, we received a homework slip that had to be signed by our parents. After 3 homework slips we would get a detention. While I was always at the top of my class, the first quarter of every year was met with me receiving 3 homework slips and coming right up to the point of getting a detention. Now, I was terrified of receiving a detention and am proud to say I made it out of school with out ever receiving one. But every single year, I would flirt with the possibility. Maybe I was trying to get back into the swing of things after summer. Or maybe I just needed a wake up call that not doing your homework was never going to be okay.
Well, that year, my 5th grade year, my mother had enough. She was sick and tired of me not doing what I was supposed to do. She made me take off all of my clothes and lay on the bed while she whipped me with an extension cord. Over. And over. And over. And over again. I remember screaming for my stepdad or someone to help me. But no one ever came. No one came to help. That night, I cried myself to sleep while listening to my favorite rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" from the Bodyguard Soundtrack (that tape got me through some really tough times) while praying to my deceased father about why he had left me here with this woman. And that morning I had to wake up and go to school and smile like everything was ok. That was my requirement. You know the whole, "Stop crying before I give you something to cry about" line. Like the whipping wasn't something to really cry about. Any and every time that I had gotten into trouble and been disciplined I was required to suck it up and move on. Because you can't ever "stay stuck" (I see a future post about this soon.) Smile and talk at the dinner table. Come out of your room and tell me about your day. I quickly learned that I could not ever have a bad day or not feel like talking. I became really great at telling animated stories. Anyone who knows me can attest to this first hand.
This situation was not isolated. There are many instances that I can remember of catching a whipping. I chalked them up as normal even though none of my friends could relate. They were nowhere near the stellar student that I was and were often into all sorts of things that we had no business in as school kids. But they nor their parents could ever understand why I was always the one who was in trouble. I mean I was a good kid. I was a rule follower (still am). And I was TERRIFIED of my mother. My common reason for not doing something was, "You know I can't do that. My mama is crazy." And it was acceptable. I received a pass from my friends because they knew we were often talking life or death. Somehow, though, I found that I was still the recipient of these whippings.
I now know that this form of discipline is called physical abuse. I'm no longer afraid to call it by name. Even as I type this I wonder what lens my mother will see this experience through. She was whipped with a switch, a tree branch. Like, let that sink in. How many people do you know that have gotten beat with a tree branch? I bet you have sat in on stories about how so and so had to go and pick out their switch off the tree. And don't bring back a flimsy one or you were really going to get it. But we turned out alright. Right??
The Allegations
We didn't have yellow school buses in New Orleans. Everyone took public transportation (RTA) in order to get home. As I told you, I went to a small Lutheran school through 8th grade. The school wasn't far from home. I mean no where really is in New Orleans. So my mom gave me an hour to get home from school. I had to get home by 4pm and call her at work to let her know I had made it. Many of my friends were also latchkey kids so I was cool with it. In theory, I should have been able to get home in about 30 minutes on the bus if I were the only one riding it. However, along the route there were many public school kids who rode the same buses. With the public school kids came incidents like fights. No shade to public school or anything but they were off the chain. Or sometimes the bus driver would stop the whole bus and refuse to move until a disruptive kid got off. Other times the bus was too full to get on because it had picked up so many kids before getting to me. This caused a great deal of anxiety for me because I couldn't control whether I would make it home on time. And me not getting home on time had dire consequences.
One time, I remember our bus being delayed which was about to cause me to miss my connecting bus which would have caused me to get home after 4pm. As we were pulling up to my transferring stop I could see my connecting bus pulling up. If I didn't catch it, it would set me back 15 minutes. As I jumped off the bus, the light turned green for me to cross, and the bus to go. Oh no sir, that wasn't gonna happen on my watch. So I darted across the street, flagging the bus down so it wouldn't leave me. The only thing is a big red truck was coming around the stopped bus to make a right hand turn. Thank goodness I had been practicing my latest football moves (I was an avid Saints fan). As the truck hit me, I was able to simultaneously bust out a spin move that would have made Marshall Faulk (New Orleans native) proud. No big read truck was gonna take me down. As I made it to the bus, the driver was super concerned. He proceeded to lecture me about how dangerous it was for me to run across the street, look both ways and make sure no cars are coming and how I could have been seriously hurt. Blah, blah, blah. All I could say was, "Sir, can you drive and talk?" I mean, I had to get home.
Any time I missed my 4pm deadline I was met with the allegations of being out in the streets with boys. As a matter of fact, everything I did usually resulted in me being accused of having sex with boys. This led to me being placed on birth control at 14, even though I wasn't even entertaining the thought of having sex. I recall how traumatized I was having to go to my mom's gynecologist, a male, to have an examination. She was checking to make sure I was still a virgin (insert eye roll).
I remained on birth control until my 30's. In 2011, I made a decision to embrace celibacy. A couple years later, I decided to stop taking birth control because I really didn't need it and I couldn't remember to take them on schedule any way. I was off of the pill for 6 months and I never had a cycle. My body was clearly broken. I went back to the doctor where she ran every test they owned to determine if I was able to conceive when I was ready to. Everything came back normal, but I still wasn't having a cycle. My doctor put me back on birth control to force a cycle for a while. The terror that came with this decision was great. I began to wonder if I would ever be able to experience the joy of natural motherhood. And I was over 30 which would make conception even harder. I remember crying and praying for things to be ok. I felt like I was mourning the loss of an opportunity for motherhood that I never had a chance to even try to experience. Last year, I decided that I was going to place my concerns in God's hands. One day I just released it and asked God to show me if I would be able to be a mother and agreed to make a decision to accept whatever answer He gave me. I'm so elated to say that I have gotten my cycle 5 times in a row now, on schedule. I've never been so happy to have a cycle and cramps before. But it just reminded me that God is always listening and He never took his hands off of me.
Am I Alright?
Let's just say I truly thank God for therapy. That is the only way to heal from the constant trauma of an abusive mother and childhood. Abuse is so much more than physical. It's the verbal and emotional abuse that lasts so much longer. That's the abuse that you truly have to heal from. You have to change the recording of their voice that plays in your head. You have to cast down the ugly words that have been pronounced over you. The mind has an interesting way of healing. It usually suppresses traumatic events in order to protect us from further injury. But the true healing happens when we allow ourselves to dig up all the trauma, unpack it and reconcile it. Therapy definitely did that for me. I consider myself a survivor. I now understand how my relationship with my mother has colored many decisions that I've made throughout life. I'm in a place of peace now. And when you know better, you do better. One of my main missions in life is to be a safe place for girls who have unhealthy relationships with their mothers to be able to get wisdom and feel comfortable to ask questions without fear of discipline. I am proud to say I'm changing the narrative for many girls the way I wish someone had done for me. And one day I will have the opportunity to break a cycle of abuse for my very own daughter.
