Our voices have gone missing. We must reclaim them.
"I still hear you humming, Mama. The color of your song calls me home. The color of your words saying, Let her be... She gonna stumble on herself one of these days."- Sonia Sanchez
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Imagine a world where little Black girls got to keep their voices.
Imagine a world where little Black girls who grew up speaking loudly, boldly and authentically weren't silenced, shamed, and abused for the insights that spring forth from their mouths like sunflowers.
Imagine a world where Black women aren't struggling to find the parts of their voices that were silenced so many years ago.
Imagine a world where we could finally recapture the language of the courage we were born with and unleash it without fear.
Imagine a world where women who finally find that missing piece of themselves aren't pushed to the margins, ridiculed, maligned and ostracized.
Imagine a world where Black women didn’t lose their voices but instead ran away from the family abuse, broken marriages, and nonreciprocal friendships that tried to suffocate them.
Imagine each time a woman descended from Africa tells her truth, she is celebrated instead of sacrificed.
I remember losing a powerful voice in my life. I never saw it coming and it almost broke me.
I remember a woman born a few years after my mother who became my second mother, and her hearty laugh became my balm.
My aunt’s Yoruba-accented words became my medicine, and her gentle affirmations became a salve for the self-inflicted wounds that cut so deep into my psyche when I was young.
The voices of Black women aren't just gifts.
They create us.
They collect us.
And they cure us.
I remember seeing her in that hospital bed, and I remember her remembering that her voice was a conduit to joy for so many. And so she used that voice, even when it hurt. She forced the voice to reveal itself, even when the sounds were incoherent. As her energy waned, she would try to release a hum, a moan, or at least, a whisper.
We craved her voice as if it were scripture.
I now understand why we take the voices of Black women for granted so often. We grow so accustomed to them and their gentle embrace of our souls. Black women aren’t selfish with the words that roll so melodically off their lips and calm us. Black women allow the perfect pitch of their voices to lift us from our knees when we are broken.
They are a warm cup of love tea.
We never worry that these voices will ever leave. They push us to be stronger and render fear powerless. They can shift us into spaces and places that were bound shut.
It was four days before she transitioned to become an ancestor, and I entered her room only to find out that she could no longer speak.
Urgency filled the room, and I became desperate. I pleaded and begged her to say something because I had been spoiled for so many decades.
She always said something. I had relied on her wisdom for so long that I had forgotten my voice. We sat silently while I held her hand and looked in her eyes. She tried to speak through her eyes, and in this way, she let me know that it was time to reclaim my voice.
I didn’t realize that was what she was doing all along.
She was preparing me for the eventual transition where a little girl who had her voice suppressed becomes an adult woman who tries to live without her voice and then realizes she cannot.
She recovers it.
It is not the same. It’s been bruised. It’s quiet and careful at first, trying to get accustomed to speaking truth again.
But she finally harnesses its power again. For a few glorious decades, maybe one, two, and if she's lucky, three, she will wield it like a machete and cherish it like a warm hug. If she’s brave enough.
She will no longer allow any other human to take it from her again.
They are not permitted to rein in this gift of God that was molded by the ancestors and refined by life.
I now realize that in those days before her death, she didn't just lose her voice; she gave it to me so I could start the process—the slow and arduous task—of remembering and reclaiming mine.
Four days later, I heard her voice again.
No words, just gasps. Shallow at first. Then deep and slow. Finally, nothing at all.
The tears have never subsided. Yet I am discovering that the voices of Black women who leave this earth are never gone.
In her death, I became a protector- of the undying echo of a dying Black woman’s voice. It is my story but also the story of many women.
Her voice has been channeled into many- into those who loved the voice and into those who never even had the opportunity to hear a single utterance.
My daughters know their grand-aunt's voice. They know the sound of it because they hear it in mine.
So, this becomes one of our most important and urgent tasks. We who finally find our voices must grab them tightly and courageously give them to those who have forgotten their own.
We must remind Black girls to speak.
We must remind them that it is not their faces, bodies or wombs that bring value to their lives.
We must remind them “It is your unfiltered voice that will carry you.”
Our voices are mighty yet fragile.
Our voices represent who we are and who we continue to fight never to be.
Through their voices, the ancestral women of our lives have shaped us, for good or bad.
We must find the voice that speaks to us.
An amalgam of so many voices before us.
We must listen. And heal.
Only then can we use our voice and unearth our great power, cultivating what our future generations will become.
I miss her voice.
My only solace - I am her voice now.
So I speak.
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