Learning how to cry again

"And if we are never safe, at least let us be seen."- Renia White

Black Girl Healing is a reader-supported publication. I appreciate you for being here to read and support my work as a writer. This newsletter requires much time and thought, so it is greatly appreciated when you subscribe.

---

The miracle I always prayed for was how to stop my tears.

They would appear abruptly, without any notice—no time to prepare for the groundswell. I was that child, the sensitive one, the one it seemed I should not be, as a Black girl.

So I tried to escape my body, to coax the tears from escaping, desperate to block their flow, despite the freedom that always accompanied them.

Instead, I had to swallow the bitter teaching, from a very young age, that the grief of the women who looked like me was never honored. That our pain never reminded others to stop and remember that we had souls in need of respite and relief from the constant performance of strength.

Stop crying.

That became the mantra of my first seven years of life.

Back then, my wisdom to feel was rendered weak. A little girl who needed to be tougher. An eldest daughter who needed to keep it together. An immigrant’s daughter who needed to stay stoic in the face of adversity.

And so, I learned how to suppress emotions deep within my inner world, making the colors go gray, and the vivid images blurry. I learned to suppress tears, even as they weighed down my eyelids, ready to spill and reveal my inner secrets.

I learned to be the soldier the world needed me to be at war with myself for decades —impenetrable, masked, armored, unable to touch my body, find my heart again, feel my breath, or hear my voice.

But with change, there is challenge.

Being minimized in medical school. Enduring racism in residency. Managing the loneliness of being an attending physician in Malawi, 7,000 miles away from home. Returning to the exhaustion and struggle of getting my master's in public health degree while doing a research fellowship and seeing patients.

And over time, my well-honed skills of keeping me to myself started to wane.

I was dormant, but not dead.

I silently apologized to my mother and her mother when I could no longer keep the tradition—the peer pressure from the deceased—when I could no longer stay unopened and unseen, when I could no longer make anger a joke or grief a song.

I navigated the imbalance of work as the mother of two young children, and the betrayal of my body when I developed multiple sclerosis, which mercilessly attacked the nerves in my brain, my most prized possession. And in a week, I lost control of my limbs. My walking was abruptly put to a stop. Standing on my own seemed like a distant miracle.

And when it is all taken away, the basic parts of life you took for granted, you have no choice but to become exposed. You must rely on the world that you hid from. The pain in the recovery is relentless and you must feel it to overcome it.

And so the tears flowed as I witnessed what I had become and envisioned the journey I would take to become whole again.

I would never be myself again.

I had emerged as a new woman, patched together, more vulnerable and very tender. i doubted her strength. She was everything that I was told I shouldn’t be and I was ashamed of her.

---

She was no longer as pliable. One who had been able to morph to what society had asked her to become. She had to make the world bend to what she needed. And it wouldn’t.

When this happens, we have to leave what we know and transition to creating what has never existed. I had to evolve during a worldwide pandemic and understand that many institutions were never built for me to do the boundless work of my imagination.

This is the work that has finally been birthed now, well into her 40s. And although I am proud, I never allowed myself to mourn the woman who had to die. I never mourned, the time I had given up not being who I finally am.

So, I finally gave permission. I encouraged the tears to flow. And the first time I felt them moving through the creases of my face, I gasped.

Over the following months, as multiple personal issues showed up, one after the other, eldest daughter ready at the helm, there to battle each thing: illness, relationships, motherhood, and financial challenges of all sorts. I ran away from the outside. I retreated.

And in my solitude, the tears became my closest friend.

Now, there is no shame or guilt. Tears are always at the brink. They’ll arrive when I'm reflecting on how beautiful my friendships are, which have carried me for multiple decades.

They are there when I feel pain that is unimaginable, when the triviality of a song brings back memories, or a wistful episode of television reminds me of a past experience.

The ability for a Black woman to show her tears, to stand in them, to use them to recover, to remember her humanity, and to revive her passion for supporting others. That is the calling of our tears.

Tears are our life-giving language. One that, as humans, we have rightful access to, each and every one of them.

And they have also been my deepest expression of both the presence and the absence of love in my life. I cannot erase the fact that I harbor deep love when I connect, waiting for the chance to release it. I cannot ignore that I feel so close to the issues that break our hearts. My emotions were never meant to be separated from me, to be shown in whatever way I desire.

I was raised to hide. I lived under an order of protection that I had imposed on myself and never got too close. I was always anticipating danger from others. Criticism of my true self often came and I had not been ready. I learned not to allow others in for fear they might see me and have the ability to hurt me.

But that cannot be all of me.

That is not all of me. I deserve to have it all. Feel it all. Live it all.

We all do.
You, included.
Live, my sister.
Feel, my sister.
And don't forget the tears.

It’s finally time for us to cry.

---

If you enjoyed this post, please click on the heart at the bottom or the top of this email. It helps others discover Black Girl Healing. If you really liked this piece, consider restacking it or sharing it with a friend.

If you loved this piece, buy me a matcha tea latte just to show your love- it is my guilty pleasure that literally keeps me going!

I always want to give special thanks to those of you who have chosen to become paid subscribers. Your continuous support is never taken for granted and is helping me on my journey to becoming a full-time writer. Please know I am extremely humbled and honored by your precious gift.

If anything in the piece resonated with you, please let me know in the comments. I would love to hear your feedback. It helps inspire my future writing. I can’t wait to hear from you!