From Her Fingertips

Do you think you inherit pain? That pain is passed down though your genes just like hereditary diseases? Do you think that unresolved pain gets passed on from parents to their children? I sometimes wonder why so much pain seems to have been collected inside my body when my life has been so smooth. I know some of the pain my parents have lived though. And from experience I know a parent doesn't tell their child everything, so maybe there's pain they have gone through that I know nothing about. I know they never dealt with their pain. Never resolved their pain. I sometimes wonder if I inherited their pain because I'm more equipped to deal with it. What about my daughter? Has she inherited my pain? She was conceived at a time I was going through a lot of pain in my life, has this left marks in her DNA? Will this cause her to suffer as she gets older? Will she find herself with the same kind of monstrous things to deal with which I found myself? But that doesn't seem...

She is that friend I wish I'd never met but still stay in my life. I try to avoid her, try to hide from her, try to push her out of my life, but she comes back. She always comes back. And I try to hide so that others don't see that she's still in my life. Do they see her? Her and her sister sometimes come together, the more I resist them the more powerful they become. I sometimes wonder if I'll die with them sitting on my chest. Probably. They will be holding hands, like they sometimes do and whisper to each other as I take my last breath.

I live inside a bubble, it's clear and thin. If you try to touch it you won't feel a thing. Only I can see it, know its beginning and end. Don't know where it came from, don't know when I was chosen. Still it keeps me separate from it all, as I move around in this world. It helps to shut out the noises that may weigh me down, it helps to keep out the people that I cannot find connection too. Some days it's thick, I can barely see out. Other days it's thin, I'm afraid it's gone lost. I like this bubble. I think it keeps me alive.

Like seeds planted in spring The ticking of the clock on my nightstand Bushes, sometimes trees I don't own the tools to cut down trees Maneuver around their trunks marvel at the beauty of the leaves At times I pretend that nature does not exist Seasons change again And she wins over me

It's difficult to break the patterns. The ones that have taken years of repetition without realization of their toxicity. Doing what I've always done, even though logic tells me it makes no sense. Realizing they are there does not take their power away. How do you unlearn what you don't know where you learnt it? Maybe it has always been there, a personality trait pre-programmed before birth which is impossible to get rid of.  I thought I was doing things differently, but I'm doing the same thing all over again. 

"May the space between where I am and where I want to be inspire me."  -Tracee Ellis Ross 

Have you ever seen man look at a child with love? Not just see the child, but really see him or her. Even the biggest, toughest man's face can change completely. All the roughness is replaced by this softness that words could never capture. It's truly priceless. It's one of those moments that I wish I could capture and carry with me forever. It's a moment when his true self surfaces, if only for a short instance, it is there. It cannot be disguised by swag or machismo. It's so pure, so beautiful and real. I've seen this happen a few times in my life, every time I've been caught off guard. For me it's been a changing point in how I've view some men that have been present in my life journey. Most recently it was the moment when I knew I was in love. To have a man look at my child that way is rare, and it's even more rare when it is the man you are in a relationship with. I will never forget how he looked at my daughter with softness and a subt...

I had no one to teach me how to be a black woman growing up. My first encounter with black women was on TV on the Cosby show . Then, when I was closing in on womanhood, in my pre-teens I found hip hop. And there were rappers like Salt'n'Peper, Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown. I loved the movie Set It Off and watched it uncountable times. I also loved Waiting to Exhale . Both these movies showed strong, independent black women, and unfortunately a lot of no good black men.  I realize today how this has affected me as a woman. And in relationship with black men. My father being emotionally unavailable just added to the growing problem. (This is a whole story on its own) I am a single mother. I have been since before the birth of my daughter. This is not by chance. Pretty early on I knew I would become a single mother, years before I became pregnant. I think somehow African American images made me believe that this is what motherhood is for the black woman. And in a strange way...