I'm not Ok

"I'm not ok."

Black women have been uttering that phrase in one form or another over the course of this summer.

Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles are elite athletes in their respective sports and have placed a spotlight on the expectations placed upon Black women to always be on, always perform, always win. Regardless of the mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical cost.

This expectation has been for four hundred years.

Black women have been marginalized, demonized, idolized, and demoralized in a country that does not see them as human.

Nikole Hannah Jones, earlier this year, made the bold move to not accept the Johnny-come-lately offer of tenure only after UNC was publicly shamed for not giving it to her in the first place. She announced she would instead go to Howard University and be celebrated for her brilliance instead of tolerated for her contributions.

Black women this year, after the year of loss of everything that seemed normal in an abnormal world, decided to so something we haven't been able to do in centuries, center ourselves. 

In centering ourselves, so many people who relied on the Mammy in us for their nurturing or some variation of the Jezebel or Sapphire to satisfy their fetish, have had to face their unrealistic life-blood draw down of our essence.

I didn't think it was happening at first, almost the way the phebletomist told me I had fasted too long and my blood wasn't flowing, she couldn't get a line for the tests my doctors were ordering. "Next time, don't fast so long." 

Her comment spoke volumes to me, I had just been going through the day, it had been an especially difficult previous month and I was just depleted. I fasted by mistake, almost forgot that she ordered these tests. I had had water and a bit of coffee, but no food. Before I knew it, it was early afternoon and I still needed to get these tests done so I drove over to the Blood Draw Clinic.

They ask you screening questions before they get started. She put on the blue rubbery tourniquet and began to thump my veins, one arm didn't work so she went to the other one. She picked up the baby butterfly needle and proceeds to stick me in my dry-as-parched earth arm. Nothing.

"You can't get what you ain't got," she quipped, it wasn't flowing. "Next time, don't fast so long." 

She gave me a cotton ball to sop up the needle prick and a band-aid. "Come back tomorrow, first thing in the morning."

It was a sobering moment to me.

I had starved myself and didn't know it.

I was depleted, empty, and nothing could flow.

That is what Simone and Naomi were trying to tell us.

To invite us back into centering our own lives, our own needs, our voices, our instinct. To trust that we know what we need and if we don't speak up, everyone will keep trying to consume us or call us names if we choose to not entertain them, or produce for them, or otherwise be at their back and call.

I'm not ok is not a failed response but a champion response, to choose oneself, to center so that I can be in top form again. That is the gift I'm embracing on this Friday. Thanks, Naomi and Simone, and you, too, Nikole. 

We all deserve more.

Consuming Black Women

 

I gave myself a gift a few months ago.

It was accidental, honestly.

I had to change my Facebook password. When I did it, realized I had to change it on all my devices. The problem, turned moment, was that I forgot what it was.

So I did a thing.

I deleted it off my iPhone.

Then I sat in stunned silence. After all, I manage communications for my job and as a social and racial justice minister, I often engage on social media. It was part life and part work, but I let it go.

The silence.

It was so welcome, I deleted Twitter off my phone also.

Only Instagram remained and primarily for the original use I added it - posting about the literary circle.

What happened afterwards was a bit interesting.

I began to evaluate how much of my life is consumed. Content. Created. Consumed.

No, I do not live a "fake" life to be an influencer, my life is very much real, but how much of it I was sharing began to intrigue me.

Long gone were the anticipated rip open of the photo envelope from the local photo shop, the film dutifully dropped off several rolls at a time. Even the digital camera of almost two decades ago and the still anticipated wait for the images to come back, began to fade into memory. The smart phone meant almost instant everything. 

I could tap, capture, and share before I had a chance to really consider the story.

I used to scrapbook, loved laying out the pages, today, that is "planner" with folks using stickers to create the same thing for their day-to-day. It hadn't bothered me until my younger daughter mentioned we don't do it as much. So much is already shared.

So when I deleted facebook and took some steps back from always knowing what was going on, I pondered how much of our lives is actually fodder for others.

Perhaps it was that and the recent news of Olympic qualified sprinter, Sha'Carri. Before we could really celebrate, we knew all the details of her barely-twentyone-life. From being told by a reporter that her birth mother passed away to her stress-relief-inhale to the Olympics scratching her name off the roster, we, the public had consumed her life.

Then there was Allison Felix making a boss move after a few years ago Nike gave her the no-go when she became pregnant. Instead of letting them win, she designed her own athletic shoe.

All around us, Black women's lives are the stuff the Internet lives for.

The trend setters, cultural icons, the creators of content from TikTok moves that the local BeckySallyAmy appropriated and got millions from, glad they went on strike, to the artists, musicians, and writers who shared their thoughts.

We saw what happened with the whole debacle of UNC denying tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, that is now a thing because of public pressure to every white person in America suddenly discovering the legal concept of Critical Race Theory and deciding they didn't want little Jane and Johnny learning it. Everything a Black woman did was evaluated in the public.

Even Monique and Wendy Williams thought their unsolicited opinions mattered about the lives of other black woman, thank Tabitha for showing the grace of us in putting Wendy back in her irrelevance. But everyone was consuming us, from movement folks to ministry folks, there wasn't an area of my Black woman life or career that wasn't also a part of someone else's thinking.

Maybe not intentionally, but so much is.

Even as a writer, we want to be read, we want to share our words with others, so we open ourselves us, we want you to engage with us, but how much?

What do we lose when we are sitting here behind a screen more than being present in our lives?

I kept pondering how much was being consumed, how much content was being created and all the advertisers and marketers who were launching entire campaigns off our being-ness.

So I did a thing, I deleted Facebook from my phone and in so doing, took back a bit of my mind space. Even logged out on my laptop and just let the "notifications" pile up into the double and triple digits. I didn't want to be followed or read or even have some remote person from high school try to find me.

Being present has given me back a moment to consider the role it all plays in our lives. Have we become less critically thinking and more easily swayed by what we see? Has that always been it, commercials began on the radio enticing us to want more than we have, has the smart phone and social media made that easier? I have been thinking about all of it.

And for a while, work or not, decided that parts of my existence didn't need to be liked.