Defined: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Men anpil chay pa lou.
Many hands make the load lighter.
– Kreyol Proverb
Invitation
Is your load heavy, my dear?
I know.
It was not meant for you to carry alone, beloved.
Can you find the permission in yourself
to lay it down?
When did you first learn you had to do it alone?
For many of us, particularly those socialized as Black women and girls, we learned from young that our needs didn’t matter. Black women hold it down. Black women make sure everyone else is provided for before themselves.
We learned there was shame in needing. Needing help, needing care, needing money…. To be alive is to have needs. Yet so much of my upbringing as a Trans-masc, Queer person from the Deep South taught me to be ashamed of the parts that have need.
Could it be that our liberation is contingent upon our willingness to be witnessed? Our willingness to acknowledge and name what we need?
What does it take to look need in the eye?
A willingness to be witnessed. Vulnerability. In the words of our comrades in ballroom, I clocked you, girlie. Meaning I see you. I see what you’re trying to hide.
What are the parts of ourselves we hide out of shame or fear of judgment?
When one’s survival is at stake, we cannot afford to pretend that we don’t have needs. We may still be holding tightly to our strong, Black woman. She is reliable. She is resourceful. She gets shit done. But for so long, our doing has come at the expense of her health, her finances, and her peace. The Strong Black Woman has seen to it that we have survived for this long. But she does not exist in a vacuum.
When they ask her how she did it, she cannot but reply: “I had help.”
How do we facilitate better care methods and models?
How do we bear our loads together?
Care Reflection
- What are the limiting beliefs that make it hard to extend compassion to yourself (i.e I’m not ____ enough)? Where did you learn these beliefs?
- For each belief, write it on a piece of paper. Use as many scraps of paper as you need. Take the pieces. Burn them one by one. With each limiting belief, whisper aloud what you are welcoming in return.
- Check in with 3 friends this week as part of a continued practice of community building!
-Images & Writing By Vic Collins