Category Archives: Personal

5 New Year’s Resolutions for the Magical Black Girl In Your Life

Yo. It’s 2017. How in the heck did we get here?

“By living, Diane,” you’ll probably say. In which I’d respond, “Shut up, smart-ass.”


Continue reading 5 New Year’s Resolutions for the Magical Black Girl In Your Life

Afraid to have “The Talk” on Thanksgiving?

Hi. Are you mentally and physically preparing for a Thanksgiving holiday that may be super duper awkward with some of your family because of their recent life choices?

I don’t mean Aunt Karen married her yoga instructor, or Uncle Andre insists you call him Andrea. I mean the other thing–the political thing.

Do you want to do better as an ally but fear approaching your loved ones who voted for a racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, dirtbag?

Never fear. I’m here to help!

Continue reading Afraid to have “The Talk” on Thanksgiving?

Lost.

A couple of weeks ago was the first time since my mother was buried that I was going to be in a group setting of people who knew what happened and would be witness to a part of my recovery and healing. It would differ greatly from other excursions I had in my early grieving stages. The people at the grocery store or Starbucks couldn’t possibly know the kind of pain I was experiencing, could they? In those spaces I had a chance to be normal, almost like I hadn’t lost my mother at 29, hours after I was discharged from the hospital following a major surgery. Needless to say to say, the legit emotional coaster I was riding only had room for one. I was so, so lucky.

The main thing people have been telling me about my recovery is to listen to my body. If something makes me hurt, stop doing it. If I’m tired, rest. How many people have to have a beloved parent die after they were medically opened up to provide advice on how to not cry so hard that it feels like your stitches will burst? Or should I get that pamphlet started? I do still have aspirations of being a writer.

When I received the call that mommy died, awoken from a deep medicated sleep, I cried so hard I thought I was going to split open. How hard I fought to get discharged from that hospital just to return hours later; that would have been a funny story. One, if with many, many years between the event I would be able to share with a chuckle. Then again, I can’t imagine a life where I could talk about her death and laugh. Not when there was so much anger and confusion tied to how she died. Just like with my father. Why were we stuck with incompetent medical professionals both times which resulted in their deaths? Bigger picture though, why did they get sick and deteriorate so quickly? The two hardest workers I had known were taken out by their bodies essentially failing on them. What the fuck. How is that fair? How is that the way it ends for two industrious and faithful people whose only wish was to come to this country, get an education and pave a road and legacy for their children to follow? Why did they have to pay the ultimate price for being such dreamers, and so young. Before my dad could walk me down the aisle or before mommy could meet my first child? A child I’m now inclined to never have because they’ll never get to know her.This is when I go back to how unfair all of this is.

I know I’m fortunate to have the life I do despite what I may consider to be struggles, and honestly it could be worse. But I’m grieving over the loss of my mother, Margaret Bidi. Bright, generous, enigmatic and open and so, so forgiving. I wanted to learn how to forgive like she does, to open my heart to strangers to show how far love could get you. I used to think I didn’t like her being a friend of the people, but I was mad because I couldn’t understand her. What teenager has the capacity to get the struggle she had been through coming to this country and how it taught her to take what she was blessed with and use it to aid others? That life in some aspects was about serving others, not being selfish and closed off? I think I’m finally getting it because all I want to do now is open up to my sisters every hurt and rage I have about losing mommy. They’re the mommy’s I have left now. They know things I didn’t have a chance to learn from her and I need them now more than ever.

As I approach 30 with so much more life ahead to live I worry that I’ll impede my growth by missing her too much. The last time I saw her I felt like I knew that was going to be it. I didn’t want to leave her and I kept wanting to look at her, to try and hold that image in my mind of her in that hospital bed and not forget. But I don’t want to remember her in that way. I prefer memories of her as captured in photographs and holidays and house visits. Joking, the bossing around, smiling, living. Not on the edge of that place she’s now gone to. Snatched away by cancer. That’s not my mommy. That’s a mistake.

I miss her so damn much.

December 31, 1956-July 23, 2015 

ENOUGH.

If I have to hear or see more whitesplaining from Fox News and basically every media outlet on how the Charleston Church TERRORIST attack had nothing to do with race, but attacks on religious freedom, a hate crime against Christianity, drugs, mental disorders or anything outside of the disgusting thing that it was, a hate-filled man spreading his racist evilness on innocents, I’m going to lose it.

Just because you act like racism isn’t real doesn’t mean it isn’t. Just because you want to act like the civil rights movement was so long ago WHEN IT WAS NOT, does not make your feelings valid. But you know what a valid feeling is? This anger I have boiling inside of me that I’m finding so hard to contain.

How the hell am I supposed to look at my nieces and nephews and guarantee them that they can live free and not in fear when I can’t make that promise for my damn self?! It’s a daily worry now that I could just look at someone the wrong way and be murdered because they felt threatened by me. It sickens me that there are areas of this country I become more afraid to visit because if there aren’t many people who look like me so I can blend in, I’ll stick out like a thumb. I honestly don’t even know what the hell I’m writing right now, I’m just so so tired.

What was the point of even giving Black people any kind of “freedoms” if you were just going to come back and try to take them away from us by taking away our lives? Dare I even waste my time making plans for the future when I could be snuffed out by an overzealous cop or murdered by some guy trying to act like his own personal lynch mob? CAN I LIVE? AM I NOT A HUMAN BEING TOO JUST BECAUSE I’M BLACK?? Just like white people don’t have control of what race they’re born into, neither can I! What makes these racists think they’re better than me just because they got lucky? You’re still ignorant and mentally stunted, but I’m not holding that against you! Too much…

Lke, I’m emotionally drained. I am. Although none of these tragedies have hit my family personally, I feel a loss with every young black life taken away. Every black life taken away. EVERY LIFE, BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. IT’S MY OUTCRY FOR THE WORLD TO STOP KILLING MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS. STOP TREATING OUR DEATHS LIKE THEY’RE OUR FAULTS, LIKE BECAUSE WE DRANK BEER IN COLLEGE WE DESERVED TO DIE BRUTALLY. STOP JUSTIFYING OUR MURDERS IN THE MOST CALLOUS OF WAYS. STOP BLAMING BLATANTLY RACIST WHITE KILLERS TAKING OUT THEIR DEMONS ON POC AS MENTAL ISSUES. I’M NEARLY MENTALLY BROKEN BY YOUR ACTIONS BUT YOU DON’T SEE ME GOING AROUND AND KILLING YOU, DO YOU?

I’VE BEEN QUIET FOR TOO LONG BECAUSE MY GRIEF RIDES THE LINE OF ANGER SO CLOSELY THESE DAYS.

I said nothing about Mike Brown on here. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Ayanna Jones. Walter Scott. John Crawford. ETC ETC ETC ETC

But I literally cannot stay quiet for Clementa Pickney. Cynthia Hurd.  Susie Jackson Ethel Lance. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. Tywanza Sanders. Daniel Simmons Sr. Sharonda Singleton. Myra Thompson. R.I.P.my brothers and sisters. I will not let your death be in vain. I will not. I will not. I can not. I refuse. I just can’t.

Hey. Ho, Let’s Go!

New laptop is here. Are you ready? Because I am. And this thing is like Kylie Jenner after she got her new lips and went to her 25-year old boyfriend’s house ready to show him what she could do!

Wait. What do you mean she’s only 17? And her parents are okay with this? But like…isn’t that illegal? I don’t understand?! Why is this okay? Like stop? Come on.

Continue reading Hey. Ho, Let’s Go!