A BHM Love Letter
The best love letters, I think, are goodbyes.
The ones that shed something, that say no, this is not for me, something is better, there is a different life waiting. They are, of course, also the hardest ones to read, and to write. Ultimately, saying goodbye is always a greeting, but it can be hard to see that through a sense of loss.
Black History Month 2019 comes to an end today, and this fallacy of an ending brings with it a host of reflections. Some of them personal and soft, others harder, geared toward battle and the action of making change.
The key, of course, is that BHM is as much about Black Futures as it is about Black Histories, and that the breadth and depth and wondrous brilliance of our various Blacknesses of being can never be, will never be, contained to a month.
The community and individual fortitude that is forged and honed during this month stems from a rootedness in SELF, spreading in tendrils to COMMUNITY, to intertwine with JUSTICE, PRAXIS, and PRACTICE for our collective well-being, healing, learning, and unlearning.
*****
Now, about that unlearning. This is, after all, the UNLRN PRJCT!
Why would we want to unlearn Black History Month, you might wonder. Well, before we can bask in the beauty it creates, we must unlearn the myths that surround it, just a few of them being:
i) The myth that Black people, Black history, Black futures can and should be contained in one month.
ii) The myth that corporate greed has any place during a time that is supposedly dedicated to the uplift of Black voices. Ergo, corporations using BHM to further their capitalistic ethos don't get a cookie for raising awareness during one month, making a profit out of their selective uplift, then returning (business as usual) to oppressive practices that globally suppress the very voices and lives they selectively amplify during this, the shortest, month.
iii) The myth that Black people must participate in this month. Must put themselves and their stories on the line for public consumption, and under the gaze of white supremacy. That it isn't a choice. We deserve to be supported this and every month, and that may or may not result in a desire within us to speak our stories, to teach, to engage. The myth is that this shouldn't or can't be a month of rest, for Black folx. I beg to differ.
*****
These myths led me to question the role this month plays in my own life. I've unplugged a bit, these 28 days. Decided to retain my resources for myself, to dedicate myself to me and my healing. Decided to start this month what I've been trying to enact for years: to make a practice out of prioritizing my mental health over and above leading people to knowledge even when I find myself spent. One cannot water plants from a dry well, and the desertification of Black internal and communal reserves by white supremacist structures is profound.
This BHM, I sat with my blackness.
I sat with my blackness in an old so-called home I meant never to return to for any length of time, and I tried and tried to settle in, to resist the urge to run from a past I've not yet fully reckoned with. I journaled, I redeveloped and refigured my yoga, meditation, pranayama practice, I danced, I took care of my loved ones however I could, I listened to music that soothes my soul, I started the journey of learning a language I love that hails from a place I mean to return to, and felt it rolling around on my tongue, making new homes in my mind, new rhythms, new sounds. I read favourite passages from favourite authors, I watched snow fall in thick, fluffy chunks and minuscule flurries. I took walks in -40 windchills where Celsius and Fahrenheit convene, and briefly collapsed into snowbanks when it all became too much. I watched steam rise from towers and sunset after sunset and wrote poems and drank endless cups of herbal teas I concocted in small jars with crude labels. I took my hair in my hands gently and with love, I moisturized it against the pervasive, penetrating cold this month brought with it, helping all us black folx prove that no, not even a deep freeze can kill our self love. I gazed up at trees and breathed in oceans and stood on frozen rivers in blue light. I returned to me, so that I could embark on the paths I know I’m meant to walk a more whole and integrated version of myself.
I have also spent this BHM in a state of constant inspiration.
This is a love letter to an unlearning of the myths surrounding this month, and to myself, absolutely, but perhaps even more so it is a love letter to those who are doing the work in their ways, those who are being the change, the womxn and non binary folx who are speaking their blistering and vulnerable and rageful and solemn and brilliant truth to power. Who engage daily in the building of a different world. They are my friends, my colleagues, and people I've never met but whose work I follow earnestly and with such an enormous love and appreciation.
What I will hold most closely about this month will be the conversations I’ve had with my chosen family of Black womxn, both blood and heart, out there being unbelievably amazing, unbelievably resilient in the face of endless obstacles, unbelievably unwavering in their support of one another as we all navigate this world and do our very best to make something whole of it all. One of my closest people told me, loosely quoting Lucille Clifton:
"you are still standing, and we have to celebrate that everyday something has tried to f*cking destroy you and has failed, and that celebration should look like a virulent, aggressive, unshakeable faith in yourself."
If that ain’t a word for the month, the year, the century, for Black people, for our futures.
*****
I made a beauty out of a cold, dark month. That's what Black people do in a world that seems hellbent on crushing us. This Black History Month I have spent hours dreaming of a brilliant and Black future. My own. A collective one. One where I step into my purpose and power, where I go places that make my heart sing and my mind whir excitedly, then still itself in relief. I have attempted to care for myself radically. I have looked in the mirror with eyes made of daggers and sent my self-doubt into a watery grave in the sink. I only look at myself with flowers and streams, from now on.
And I will continue this every day. No days off. This is the deeper, the deepest, work. That full and soft goodbye from a place of love. Goodbye to the emptiness of corporate greed capitalizing off of Black traumas, goodbye to stagnation, goodbye to the feeling of not being enough, of lack, goodbye to tenuous community made weak by internalized oppression, goodbye to doubt, goodbye to thankless work, goodbye to unnecessary stress, goodbye, goodbye, so long, farewell, don’t come back now, invitation rescinded.
This month, I focused on loving and nurturing every Black and beautiful part of me, and that has been a fruitful, ripening endeavour.
There are, thanks to this month of stillness, many things in the pipeline, opportunities for us to learn and UNLRN and create together.
Stay tuned...
With Love, and all the reciprocity and accountability and community that entails,