Who we must become: A litany of lament & joy for my Black sisters

“Revolution begins with the self, in the self…It may be lonely. Certainly painful. It’ll take time. We’ve got time...Not all speed is movement.” - Toni Cade Bambara

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They said, “Don’t ever let them see you cry.” I followed this instruction, never realizing how those words centered my oppression. I didn’t know that our liberation is actually found in what they did not tell us. 

We need to see us cry. 

When all seems lost, our existence as Black people is a testimony, our joy is a rebellion, and our tears are a refuge. And so, we must let the tears flow. We must let them speak for us in a way that words cannot. We must let them run like rivers for no specific reason and every reason imaginable. 

There is no weakness in this communal grief, only power. This power connects us by allowing us to recognize our shared pain and humanity. 

This lament liberates us from the myths taught by empires who fear us: “Freedom can only be for some, and it requires oppression and destruction.” 

We know better. 

Yet, if we’re honest, so many of us have tried not to face this internal battle between our ancestral beliefs of collective power and the imperial teachings of individualism we have ascribed to in lands built on genocide, blood, slavery, rape and murder. 

We are taught exhaustion is our excellence and financial gain is our freedom. And we believed it. 

The harder we clung to these false tenets, the harder our ancestors wept. They did not grieve for who we had become but for who we would never become. 

So here we are, coming to grips with the world we knew existed but denied as reality. And they think they have broken us because they don’t know us. The oppressor never has to. 

They do not know that our Blackness is bigger than any nation, government, race, ethnicity or geography. It transcends them all. 

We are the African, the Taíno, the Māori, the Aboriginal, and the First Nations, and our Blackness is our communion. 

With this connectedness that strengthens us, we also acknowledge the fragility of our individual bodies and the pain that has found shelter within them. It is layered and deep. The hurt reverberates within each part of my existence- as a Black mother, a Black daughter, a Black community member, a Black sister-friend and a Black woman. 

As a Black mother, my strength left me to help me find my humanity. It left me so I could not hide my fear from my children. It left me so I could not cling to knowledge or create a strategy to console myself. It left me, and my daughters saw me naked for the first time. They heard the vulnerability in my voice, as I fumbled to find words to answer the question they couldn’t-  “Mama, how come so many people don’t care about so many people?”

I had no perfect words. So, I used my body- arms held in a tight embrace - to communicate that they were loved in a society that decided to choose hate.

As a Black daughter, I checked in on my parents, who were not surprised but still scared. As they age, I see the mix of love, regret and fear they are experiencing, worried about what we will have to contend with when they are no longer here. And I wrestle with my anger about how much they didn’t tell me. I wrestle with the facade they created about this world and what I was told to do to survive. I followed the rules. I got the education. I didn’t make waves. I believed it because it was so simplistic that I should have recognized it would never be sufficient.

As a Black community member, I am reminding myself to take in every smell, every moment of joy and laughter of our people in a world that is actively working to erase our ancestry from history. I must be an activist, working to bring us what we are owed, and an archivist, documenting our memory so it can never be taken away.

As a Black sister-friend, I am learning how words are not always needed in times of challenge. Sometimes, we need to remember that when everything is chaotic, we become the silence, the solace and the space that each of us needs. It reflects people going through the same, yet different, lives. We are a salve for each other— healing each other with who we are, not what we do, not what we bring, nor what we’ve created.

Most importantly, as a Black woman, I am learning to let go while remaining vigilant. There is always work to do, but I must remember that it is not mine alone. Instead of distracting myself with clarion calls to save, heal, restore, and revive the brokenness around us,I recognize that my soul can no longer be ignored. Too many of us have postponed our healing because we believed others would tend to our wounds.  

We must repair ourselves in our rest. 

We must sit with ourselves in silence. 

We must cry and commune with our Creator. 

And she will see us, hear us, and restore us.  ‘

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“Revolution begins with the self, in the self…It may be lonely. Certainly painful. It’ll take time. We’ve got time. That of course is an unpopular utterance these days. Instant coffee is the hallmark of current rhetoric. But we do have time. We’d better take time to fashion revolutionary selves, revolutionary lives, revolutionary relationships. Mouth don’t win the war. It don’t even win the people. Neither does haste, urgency, and stretch-out-now insistence. Not all speed is movement.”

— Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman (1970)

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So when I allowed the tears to flow, in fierce resistance to what I had been taught, I did not wipe them away. I now know these tears are here to wash away everything I was told to be and reveal the person I am.

It will be Black women who will show us all how to live each day. 

Like our mothers and grandmothers, we have had to remain steady as we traverse the in-between where things aren’t clear, where things aren’t easy, but where they are true. 

Like our mothers and grandmothers, we have thrived with and without, doing what our people have done for thousands of years—navigating life through both light and dark, sickness and health, and peace and chaos. 

Let us be clear: The empire will strip everything from us that they hope we value—money, careers, and accolades—and try to make us believe we have nothing. 

We have each other.

We are a large, mighty and global resistance. We move with an ancestral knowing, a certainty that we are whole beings but never complete without each other.

These moments of struggle will forever shape our lives, and although this may be the most difficult one we have experienced, we will succeed. This fight is not new. The tools are embedded in our blood and bones; we only need to decide if we will use them. 

There is only one path for those who remember that our lives are not our own. Collective liberation is the only choice when we know there is no them, only us. 

We are the ones who must remember when:

the Xhosa say, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu", meaning “a person is a person through other people.”

the Navajo say, “Hózhó”, meaning “one with and a part of the world around you.”

the Ewe say, "Owo n’aye dzido do, tsitsiviyeye kple amenyo", meaning “one cannot contain all wisdom; wisdom comes from the people.”

the Māori say, "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" meaning "my strength is not that of an individual, but that of the collective."

the Taíno say, "Guakia baba, Guakia to", meaning “I am the land, and the land is me."

And the Yoruba say, "Ọmọ eni kò ṣe díẹ̀ k'á gbé." meaning “no one’s child is too heavy to carry."

This is Gil Scott-Heron’s untelevised revolution that pushes us. This is Coltrane’s Love Supreme that calms us. This is our long but beautiful journey. We will rest, reclaim, resist, revolt, and most importantly, remember.

Ourselves and each other.

This is the work.

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Black women, open your eyes.

Can you see them in the distance? 

They have been patiently waiting for us.

 The women we were always meant to be.

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Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won; you earn it and win it in every generation. That is what we have not taught young people, or older ones for that matter. You do not finally win a state of freedom that is protected forever.”

— Coretta Scott King

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