People are quick to say, "Slavery was in the past, what happened back then doesn’t have an effect today." Well, Black women have been raised, socialized, and programmed for generations to internalize every pain, heartache, and tragedy as if it is nothing more than just another drop in the bucket. It's Black women who suppress our emotions, who treat depression like it’s a normal way of life because we have been taught that to do anything less is paramount to a sin and a shame. The messages that black women have passed on, that we wear as badges of honor, aren't healthy. In fact, they are the key factors to us having high blood pressure in outrageous numbers, of us dying from heart disease exponentially more than any other race, and that prevent us from forming healthy relationships. It is our legacy from slavery. Since African women landed on these shores, we have been told to suffer in silence in order to make it to another day. To feel pain is to be considered weak; it’s not even an option for many of us.
We are a nation of women who don't know how to deal with our pain because we had to keep on keepin’ on during slavery or feel the pain of the whip. Today, our behaviors mirror those of the plantation. During slavery, mother's taught their daughters to expect to be whipped, raped, beaten, used and abused and to hold back the tears when the pain comes in order to survive. Today, we are repeatedly told that if a man molests us, that we are somehow responsible for his abusive and violent actions because we did something to lead him on, if he beats us, we asked for it. When we go to our mothers and sisters and friends, who are unhealed from their own emotional wounds, they tell us to get over it, to forget it and move on. When our men abandon us, we don’t have time to mourn or cry or feel depressed, we still have to work, raise our children, and maintain stability. We make fun of white women for going to therapists, for admitting that they are depressed as if they are less than real women. We’ve been so brainwashed into believing these lies we don’t even question that there is another way to exist.
You can be assured that there are scores of black women who believe it's a good thing to be able to deal with pain without falling apart, to hold everything in, to be the rock that everyone else can count on, that building up a wall to keep everyone out is something to be admired. They are the same black women that have the physical ailments that go along with the suppression of emotions. They are the same Black women who sabotage their relationships because they refuse to show vulnerability because they equate it with weakness, who feel the need to emasculate their men in a futile attempt to try and feel powerful. Resiliency is a strong characteristic; denial is not. We have to start asking ourselves, is the way we are behaving really working for us? Are we really happy holding on to the concept that we have to be super hard and super mean in order to be Black women?
Failure to process pain isn't a good thing. Constantly projecting an image of hardness isn't a healthy thing either. Black women are so conditioned to be the mythological “Strong Black Woman” that we fail to realize that we are living in a constant state of depression that is killing us. We can’t even grasp the concept that there is a better way to live, that we can live life more abundantly and peacefully than just pushing down the pain until it eats us up. We will forever be tied to slavery, and a slave mentality, as long as we refuse to accept that our pain isn’t the foundation of our womanhood. We must acknowledge that we need help, that we can’t be the source of everyone else’s comfort all the time and not have anyone comfort us. We can’t be a caricature of the neck-rolling, “I can do bad all by myself” Black woman who is passing down dysfunction and disease to our children. We have to start loving ourselves enough to admit that it’s okay to break down, to cry, to admit when we are overwhelmed, process those feelings and then HEAL. The objective is not to wallow in our despair but to acknowledge that we have been hurt, that we need nurturing and love and to find that source of love inside first and then to seek it out in people who will help us move to a higher plane.
Copyright 2007 Scottie Lowe
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