From Rock Bottom to Fertile Ground

I've learned that rock bottom is different for everyone.
I use to trick myself into believing that I've never known pain because my symptoms were different.

They didn't hurt any less.
The bruises weren't any more beautiful.
I didn't know beautiful.
I didn't know she lived inside me, didn't know she was the clawing in my throat begging me to use my voice.
Beauty was one shade.
Dark and lonely,
And searching for compassion in the hearts of all the wrong people.

Rock bottom is a lot darker than they say in the books.
Much like my skin and midnight.
The movies don't tell you about loosing yourself.
Don't tell you that you will find yourself in the same places you left her.

I lost her.

Every carefree laugh.
All the songs and dances.
My poems.
Every beautiful thing I've always been.

I lost her.

It took so long to find her, and when I did she was unrecongnizable.
She was frail, growing smaller with years of me telling her not to speak.
Not to shine.
Not to grow.
I water her everyday  now.
Whisper love into her pedals and turn old soil into fertile ground.

You feel broken now.
But you will soon find someone.
And they will decorate your tears as beautiful.
Paint the pain into battle wounds that only you had the strength to live through.
They will smooth the edges that have been roughed over time and time again.
Somehow you will find someone, who will never make you feel shattered again.
I pray that someone is yourself.

A Colored Girl's Song

Ain't nothing like the tears a colored girl sheds.
Ain't nothing like being three-fifths a man when you ain't one, searching for your fraction to call home. Your borrow to nestle into and be comforted by the affirmations that you are at least something.

Not one thing saltier than the rivers we flow. Than the rivers we drown in daily. Than the very streams we fill to the brim, but ain't nobody searching for colored girls. We're shh'd into midnight stories as fable as black superwoman. When we go missing, don't nobody lift a finger. Don't nobody call the police. They ain't listening no ways, 'specially not for no brown girl body.

We ain't bodies. Bodies ain't ours.

We enter rooms by invitation. Cook your meals. Clean your home, but where's a colored girls home?
Where we sing?
Where we dance, and shout, and praise?
Where we human? Where we home?
Colored girls ain't got no home. Only too deep skin. Only flesh far too resembling of blood and night.

Tonight we stand colored girls. We link like chains, and we be woman as much as we be colored and we be colored as much as we be woman.

 Don't you make us choose which fence we straddle on today. We spent far too much time with our legs shoved open. Who built them through our backs in the first place?
Our backs been bent for years.
Grandma ain't never stood straight.
We kneel to let you get a better seat.

How life look from up there?

Colored girls ain't seen life head on. Only pain and sorrow. Only the soles of boots knocking our faces in.

And we keep passing down this same colored girl blues. We sing it without knowing.
How I learn this song?
How the words morph into my skin like tattoos?
How they taste like home already?
How my mouth already taped shut?
I barely had the chance to use it, but I use it now.

We spit color into your ears. Pray it rings like fight and stings like fire.
Colored girls know fire. We been the first ones to feel his burns. And we burn. We been burnt.
Had fire extinguishers blown through our souls.
We immune now. Try again.
We the toughest things you'd ever wish to get rid of.

But here we are.
Colored girls.
Singing our colored girl blues. Crying our colored girl tears.
Knowing this life ain't meant to cradle souls like ours. Flesh like ours.
But we be here, anyhow.
We be colored, anyhow.

You've tried for centuries to blow us away. But we be colored trees.
Roots planted so deep and you can't see pass the soil.
We be brown and black. And yellow and red.
And all the colors of all the rainbows.

And you just can't silence a colored girl's song.

Stigmas That Need Demolishing

Hi everyone!
So my mind has been running like crazy lately. I believe I've reached a higher level of thinking and for that, I am so grateful. I've been thinking of new ways to combat stigmas that I will undoubtedly face as a black womyn. (WoMYN; is a non traditional spelling of women. It's used by modern feminists to avoid ending the word with "men".) We are plagued with numerous stereotypes and not only have I decided that I won't fall victim to them, I am taking it upon myself to debunk them all together.

That is a heavy weight, I know. But what is life, if not adventure and challenge.

Okay. Let's debunk the notion that womyn NEED a man to be complete. PUHLEASE!
"What's a Queen without a King?"
A QUEEN. A GODDESS. Whole and complete in her own being.
Sayings like this argue that womyn are not an entire entity until she meets a man who will come along save her. Then and only then will her life and her Self be complete.
Trash that Notion!
We are Queens far before we meet our partners and we will shine as Queens far after they leave. Stop teaching little girls that they need a man for their lives to hold value. That is damaging, cut it out.

Can we also stop telling girls that boys are mean to them because they like them!
I don't think parents realize how damaging that is. You are teaching little girls that pain and aggression are synonymous with love and beauty. So yes, the third grade school boy may be mean to your daughter because he likes her. But what happens when she grows up and the high school boy ignores her, when her college boyfriend pushes her, when her fiance slaps the smile from her skin? She has grown up thinking that these actions means he loves her, so she stays. She stays in these unhealthy relationships because that is all shes been taught.
Trash that Notion!
As parents, caregivers, mentors, big sisters, whatever our role may be...we have a responsibility to teach our girls self love and self value. Be careful of the language you choose.

This one really grinds my gears, and I know there will be Aunties and Godmothers who disagree, but there is NO SUCH THING as ladylike. That is a social construct that some man came up with, and we have been passing it through generations for centuries.
Womyn don't have to be petite, to be any more womyn.
Womyn don't have to shave, to be any more womyn.
Womyn don't have to wear make up, to be any more womyn.
Womyn don't have to be quiet and meek and gentle, to be any more womyn.
Trash that Notion!
YOU ARE ALREADY WOMYN ENOUGH. You don't have to try to morph who you are into these stereotypes the world tries to shove down your throat. You are beautiful, in all that you are..in all that you choose to be.
And again, as sisters we HAVE to stop shaming our sisters for their choices. Believe it or not, what another sister does with her body, does not effect you. So let her live and shine, and I promise you will do the same.

These are just a few Stigmas That Need Demolishing. There are plenty more that push my buttons, but I can literally write a novel..
(Which is something I'm really looking into, so stay tuned.)
We each have a role. My role is my voice. My tool, my weapon, my arsenal is my voice. I ask you what is your role? Will you continue to survive in this misogynist world, full of angry stereotypes, or will you join me in debunking them?
Sister and Brothers what is you role?
Start talking and Trash that Notion!

Comment some other stigmas below. I really want to talk to you guys!
As always, thank you So SO much for reading. Writing and sharing makes me feel so happy and free. I feel like I am Home, here.
Until next time,
Stay Happy, Stay Healthy.
~Naturallykbiggie