It’s always about race. Let’s not kid ourselves.
I originally wrote this back in August. This was sitting in my computer, having done its job to provide a moment of catharsis.
It’s almost 3 months later, and we are days away from one of the most important elections of my lifetime. As a writer, it is one of the ways that I process. As a Black woman in America, writing, therapy, prayer, and having several spaces to process the hurt, anger, outrage and grief of this year has helped me to stave off the onslaught of all that 2020 has thrown at us. I originally was going to update it for this month, but decided to let the moment stand as it was written. Covid19 continues to rage. When I looked at the stats today, we are now at 8.5 M cases in the US, and 224K deaths. And yet 45 continues to host “super spreader” events, where there are no social distancing or masks encouraged, in the name of his ego and a dogged determination to win, no matter what the cost, even the lives of the American people he is supposed to represent.
But I digress. Here’s the piece I wrote on 8/8/2020. Stay vigilant. Be safe. Take care of your own mental and emotional health. We are becoming more and more angry and divided. Make sure that you get a healthy dose of TLC on a regular basis. And be sure to start with yourself.
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It’s a Saturday afternoon. I’m sitting in my apartment in Oakland, CA, having been shut in for 5 months and counting due to the global pandemic that is covid19. I’ve been working on and off on my book about my mother and grandmother since November. As our world has become more fearful, anxious and dangerous, we have all become numb to how rapidly the fabric of our society has unraveled. As of today, 19.5M people worldwide have contracted the virus, with 724,000 deaths. In the US, the biggest hotspot in the world, we have over 5M cases, and 164,000 people have died, many of them Black and Brown people like me.
On top of this horrific scene is yet another high-profile string of deaths at the hands of the police. Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and others have joined the dreadful list of people gone too soon at the hands of law enforcement and hate-mongers, such as Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice and so many others.
Black Lives Matter uprisings have occurred all over the world, and 45 began weaponizing the national guard and federal troops against peaceful protestors and using the moment for political gain. Ironically, I got a call today about a personal friend whose daughter was unjustly stopped, attacked and arrested by the police. Thank God, she is alive and at home. But what she and her family experienced should not be seen as normal, yet it has become normalized in our society.
Along with so many Black and Brown people in America, I have been dealing with my own level of trauma as a result of this debilitating set of circumstances. Thankfully, my workplace encourages frank and open dialogue about what this confluence of events is costing us. We give each other space to talk about the people in our lives who have been sick, the losses we are experiencing, and the pain we are all persevering under. Our healthcare policy creates space so that we can better afford therapy and other supportive treatment as needed.
A NEW MOMENT IN AMERICA
Amidst all the pain and turmoil, I am proud of the awakening that is happening, the passion of our younger generations stepping up just as we recently lost another of our heroes, John Lewis, who literally passed the baton to them before his death. I’ve been a fan for some time, and was moved to learn even more about his story, and about how when he was young, his elders thought that he and his colleagues from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were radicals, being reckless and dangerous, just as people consider our young people today. It seems to have served him well, and that gives me a modicum of hope. I also have a very healthy amount of skepticism at the outpouring of support around the world, introspection and hand-wringing born of white guilt. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?
Since moving to California over a year ago, I’ve been on a long-overdue journey to begin healing and unlearning some of the survival strategies that had been bred into me as a Black woman in America. White supremacist culture has done a number on us. We’ve been taught to be twice as good, work twice as hard, and be above reproach, all while we suffer under the disdain and hatred of systemic racism as we try to live our lives. We are questioned and assumed that we don’t belong in certain places. Police violence against black bodies is now documented on video so we have more records of the injustices — tools that didn’t exist when Emmett Till was horrifically murdered back in 1941.
THE TRAUMA WE ARE CARRYING ENDURES
Over time I’ve built up an armor that has become so much of my being that it’s like a second skin. The mask I wear has become indistinguishable from the soft curves of my natural face. I am just now unpacking the level of pain and trauma that I’ve been carrying around for over 50 years in my Black body, assuming it was “just the way it is”. Therapy is helping me to unpack some of this, but if I’m being honest, I know I’ve only just scratched the surface. There are things I’m carrying around unspoken, but now I’m beginning to learn to trust myself and value myself to acknowledge that it is not normal what we have been through. It’s not healthy to carry around secrets and pain that is buried so deep that you forgot it was there.
I’m on this journey, and it’s as if I am seeing with fresh eyes. I get to tell the truth. Not the sanitized version of “a truth” that I think people will find acceptable, that will fit into the image people assume of this accomplished, intelligent woman who walks a certain way in the world. I am learning to speak the truth about my past, my family, and my insecurities. I am on a journey to wholeness.
When I awoke this morning, I started to connect the dots that as I am working on this book, it’s important for me to pause and acknowledge the toll that this moment in time is taking on me, even as I begin to open up space for real talk about mental health, depression, suicide, and alcoholism. As I write this, my nerve endings are on edge, because I am experiencing a full-circle moment. I am acknowledging the path that I took, growing up in poverty, being one of the Black children that society things so little of. But God! God gave me a strong family that would build in me and my sisters the positive outlook, grit and tenacity to move forward and to challenge the tropes that were foisted upon us. Back then young black children were considered pickaninnies, assumed to be stupid, silly and of no value. And yet, I stand as a divorced mother of 2 young adults, making a good income, in a leadership position, a best-selling author.
Despite all of these things, every time I see one of my people murdered, one of my young brothers and sisters beaten by the police, it’s as if my body is absorbing it on my own. I don’t know how many tears I’ve cried since March. We are all in a new space, operating in spite of this new altered reality. We do our work. We find a way to share our pain and console one another. And then we pack it away to take on the current burdens of this world, trying our best to maintain our mental and emotional health, our relationships, and even experience joy from time to time.
As if that wasn’t enough, at this time, I am writing about my difficult family upbringing, the pain of losing my mother and grandmother within months of each other, and the gaping hole those losses left for me and my sisters — leaving lasting effects that we are still processing. I am not on a deadline. I’m taking my time. I’m only working at it when I have the emotional space to do so. And I’m making space for creativity, for love, for learning, and connection.
I am just one Black woman in America. And I am exhausted. We all are.
Despite it all, I’m doing the work. Talking to my therapist weekly. Connecting with my family and friends. Nurturing a new relationship. Working with my colleagues to be bold enough to imagine a world where racism isn’t the leading factor in whether our young people succeed or not.
And in the words of Queen Maya Angelou… Still I Rise.
Trina Ramsey is an executive coach, author, and nonprofit fundraiser. She launched the Just Do You Institute for Women’s Empowerment for women over 40 who are ready to live on their own terms. Learn more at justdoyouinstitute.com