Finding Toni

 I woke up this morning thinking about Miss Sophia in The Colored Purple and her one famous line at the dinner table after being jailed, beaten, and humiliated by the insulted wife of the town's mayor.

"All My Life I Had To Fight."

It was ringing in my spirit because in a lot of ways, I've had to do the same thing.

So have a lot of Foundational Black Women.

Fight through family structures and fight past leicherous men in church, on the job, literally everywhere.

Fight past the Becky-SallyAnn-Karen-Sue of educational spaces or work spaces who were both intimidated and embarrassed because a Black woman knew more than they did.

Fight to wear my hair the way she grew, even had to confront a fellow Black woman in a corporate setting who used to do the every-ten-days press and curl appointment during her extended lunch hour. 

Fight in ministry to be heard.

Fight in society to be understood.

All our lives.

And after the 2024 election, when we had put it all on the line, blood, sweat, tears, we marched, called, lobbied, campaigned, everything, collectively, to get the country to see we were trying to save this democracy for herself, we grew tired of fighting.

I pretty much turned off my social media. I logged off Facebook, deleted the app of it that was on my phone, almost stopped shopping at Amazon (daughter in college and shipping needs are why I haven't let go of that devil yet). I don't shop at Wal*Mart and haven't since my girls were single digit age and a worker tried to insult me with a cart full of school supplies, I left that entire purchase and went to Target. For the next fifteen years - Tarjay got all my shopping. I had girls, so the beauty aisle and new, affordable, fashions were the rage. Well, I haven't been to Tarjay all month. 

Other things I decided to do was reduce the passionate talk about politics.

Not completely eliminate it, but reduce it.

Who was listening to Black women anyway?

The most I do these days is repost. And keep saying We.Tried.To.Tell.You. Why try to convince the ones who were willfully ignorant and complicit.

I have, however, turned to my comfort space of books. I've shared them and have been reading voraciously, after all, MSNBC lost me the day before the election and now that they whitewashed their platform, they won't get me back.

Maybe that is the design, the orangeseniorcitizeninoffice wants to control the messaging.  

I have other news sources, more reliable, and do tap into that, like the dumpster fire waiting on the country between the measles outbreak and now the house cancelling Medicaid. I want to be aware, but I've decided to guard my peace.

So, I have been coming home from my chaplain job, taking a shower, getting something cool to drink, and snuggling up on my sofa to read a book.  

Sometimes, I am engaging my mind with a nonfiction book like Tyranny or Emancipation of the Mind or Mediocre - all books I've read this month, and other times, I'm reading fiction. Currently reading Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor.

I've been trying to find Toni again. Myself, my being past the folks I'm still kinda angry at for not listening in 2008 when I told them this was coming.

Now, I'm not a big name womanist prophet or anything, just have earned my M.B.A.and my M.Div, and know how to read the times, but not a big name that anyone cared. I warned, though, about the coming book bans and assaults on education, on what was happening locally and folks should pay attention more than just screaming on the street corner in in Ferguson. I was rebuffed.

So, part of me checking out is renewing and reclaiming my own soul.

Sis is tired.

Sis is sixty.

Sis is trying to live the remaining quarter of my life with whatever peace I can find.

Sis is taking pictures.

Sis is reading.

Sis is writing.

Sis is surviving.

Cause, Sis is tired of fighting.

Sis is finding Toni...again.

©2025 by Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group LLC, Antona B. Smith.

Sis is sitting in her room eating a croissant sipping an Ethiopian coffee in a hand made Moroccan mug. Finding herself in life.