Letter to Black Women

I wrote this letter for Citizen SHE United, an amazing women’s civic organization here in New Orleans. Every week, founder Nia Weeks sends out a letter to the community of Black women engaged in her work. It was an honor to contribute my voice to her mission!

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Dear sister,

I see you. You’re having a bit of a moment right now, perilously close to allowing yourself to feel ashamed for not being the hero you thought you would be during this time of crisis. The very air is hard to breathe, and you always thought that during such times you would be out on the front lines, handing out oxygen and carrying those around you. That you’d be the problem-solving “strong one” who takes charge and gets it done, just like you’ve been so often in the past. 

Instead, the hellscape outside presses on, and you find yourself staying inside. 

You can’t forget that there is an outside. From your window, you hear it all: 

--the music flying out of cars 

--the chants of the protests

--the cries of those burying their loved ones 

--the steady drop of think pieces and devastating statistics

--the lilting voices of children, home every hour of the day

--the noxious screeches of those who won’t mask-up

--the trill of the birds.

You stay at home and you fear you aren't enough. You berate yourself, for if you were just a little bit stronger, you feel sure that you could tackle all of this and awake to each unending day with energy to spare. 

Instead, the years of pushing through and being strong caught up to you. All at once. During a pandemic.

I am at home, too, sis.

You stay at home and worry about your mama, who can’t stay inside and hasn’t for a while because of her job at an essential business. You worry about yourself and your friends who can work from home, but who are now clinging to work that feels more precious than ever and hoping that they can keep going, keep contributing enough, keep being present enough to hold onto it all. 

You stay at home and think about how nothing matters more to you than your family: your sisters who are far away, and your sister who is down the hall. You are so thankful for them that it hurts. 

You stay at home and it all feels beautiful, precarious, terrifying, volatile. 

Oh yes, I am at home too, sis.

So I know. I know you might feel tempted to think that there is only room in this moment for the warriors, for the healers, for the protesters. The lifesaving changes we need in this world aren’t going to happen without them, that is for certain. Yes, this is their moment. 

But don’t count yourself out. Because perhaps you’re staying at home while hurting. Maybe you’ve been hurting, and looking for healing in all the wrong places. 

I wonder, dear sister, if maybe your healing is at home.

Your body is home. Maybe, like me, this year you took steps to start taking care of yourself with more deliberation just in time for Covid to make your body a source of both gratitude and existential fear. But you cannot fear living inside your magnificent body. Not right now. So stay home with it. I took a chance and got a surgery last month that I’d been putting off for nearly three years. I spoke to so many other black women who had also put off intervening in their own wellbeing, usually to avoid experiencing downtime. To postpone the slowdown that accompanies letting your body heal up. Now it’s a pandemic and you are at home anyway. So you heal. 

Your sense of worthiness is home. Perhaps this year you wanted to fall in love with yourself and then share that love--to make good on that resolution to get involved and build community and let people in. Let people see you. You’re staying at home with yourself, maybe for the first time in your adult life. Sinking deep into the well of true love, which is love for your whole and complete self, love for whatever family or community gives you love. Exploring your gifts, unraveling your secrets, confronting your hurts. Resting.

Your sisters deserve home. Many of your sisters are outside right now. Some wish they didn’t have to be, and I hope you know that you staying in right now is shoring you up to tap them out when they need to lie down. When they need to come home.

So don’t rush to tell yourself stories about staying inside. You are needed - even if only by and for your own worthy self. So stay home and find the resources innate only to you. Rest up. That is more than enough for right now.

Love,

Samantha