Trigger Warning: This letter contains references to sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Dear Black Girls and Black Women,
I love you. This week, these last few months even, have been so hard for everyone but in this space I want to talk to you about how much I love you.
My therapist told me to write a letter to my 8 year-old self, apologising for all she had been through and survived. I did it grudgingly. I had to handwrite the letter and later would read it to my therapist over zoom. Memories I’d long forgotten bubbled up to the surface as my pen moved across the page. I was calm as I told that girl that I was so sorry for all that had happened, for the abuse and abandonment, how much I wished I could talk to that girl at the time and tell her everything was going to get to get better. I told her I loved her and eventually closed the journal. I was listening to one soaring Gospel song as I moved through my home tidying up afterwards. You know the type of music I’m talking about? An unmistakably black singer’s voice towers over the choir, belting out exaltations to God. Something inside me broke and a new connection formed. I fell to my knees and wailed. That 8-year-old girl, who should have never seen what she saw or been made to feel what she felt, wasn’t some person over there. She was me. I went through all those things. I survived all those things.
My therapist later told me that putting distance between yourself and the negative things you have experienced is a common coping mechanism, a way for your mind to get on with the work of living.
Being in a global lockdown for three months means, for many us, there’s been no way to escape. We have had to meet our personal trauma in our private space while being forced to contend with communal, racial trauma in our digital space. We have had to be so strong when all I wish is that we could be safe.
I love you- sorry- us so much. This doesn’t feel adequate to express the bone deep adoration I experience when I think of us. Many people have said black people are fighting two pandemics right now. Then Black women pointed out that we are fighting three pandemics and if you are disabled, trans, non-binary and Black, you are fighting four, five, maybe even six pandemics. We are fighting. We are often fighting for Black men, who because of patriarchy, are often fighting us. As long as we minimise our plight, Black men are comfortable with our emotional, physical and digital labour on the frontlines in the war against white supremacy. This week, Black women and Black girls have been reminded that the moment we call out the ways in which Black men have failed us we become a target for their gender violence.
Last Sunday night, Misha B, bravely recounted her experiences of misogynoir as a 19 year-old on the reality competition series X-Factor. She deserved protection. Monday morning, I woke up to the news that the body of 19 year-old activist Oluwatoyin Salau had been found. She’d gone missing after tweeting about a sexual assault she had survived. I have cried for Oluwatoyin a lot. She deserved life.
As dark skin Black women, the connection between the Misha and Oluwatoyin despite the distance separating them was clear. Having dark skin, leaves you open to a special form of discrimination, the much-contended colourism. If Misha and Toyin had lighter skin, would they have been spared?
I was forced to think of my own mother, from whom I’m estranged. Seeing how the world too regularly misuses, abuses and discards Black women, especially dark skin Black women, I started to understand, for the first time in thirty-one years that my mum is perhaps abusive to me because the world has abused her.
Why then am I not abusive? Well, I have access to the support systems and tools for healing that my mother never had. I’m not better than my mum, I’m just more equipped to navigate trauma because of the time in which I have come into myself. But I digress.
The week continued, and we saw Clara Amfo’s cover of Grazia Magazine. It was like a balm over our wounds. This supremely talented woman’s face beamed. Her dark skin glowed and promised us that good times are coming.
But this week, this hellish week, refused to end without one more thing. The List. Black british women on social media circulated a list of Black men to be careful and wary of. By Saturday, the timeline was awash with Black women and Black girls sharing their stories of the horrors they’ve survived at the hands of many of these Black men. At first the list was being shared in group chats and direct messages but soon it leaked onto the timeline and some of those men released statements that said a lot but nothing at all. Black men and Black women dedicated to upholding the patriarchy, demeaned, gaslit and questioned the survivors. Their violence is naked.
Black women and Black girls, I am sorry for all we’ve had to endure. I am sorry that we have never been given the space to truly focus on ourselves, our healing, growth and advancement. To be selfish, the way everyone else is. We have had to fight for the protection of Black men from state and police violence, fight against white supremacy in the institutions we occupy and then somehow muster the energy to fight for ourselves because we are also subject to that same state and police violence. The men who killed Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland and Sara Reed (to name a few) are still free. We deserve to be safe in our bodies, our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our places of worship and we haven’t been. We work hard, harder than anybody else to be excellent. Eighty percent of Black women voted for Hilary Clinton, knowing the wayward politian she is because we saw the very real and present danger Donald Trump posed/poses. Black women and Black girls never have the choice of being complacent. The intersections of our gender and our race mean that we always have to be vigilant because racists, sexists and colourists are all out for us. And yet, we are not victims. We have made ourselves so very powerful, so very beautiful in the face of unimaginable shared and individual hardships. The world has tried its hardest to get rid of us and yet we’re still here. We will continue to be here. We are amazing. You are amazing. I love you with everything in me.
Love always,
Dani x
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