December | 2008 | Musings of a (Recovering) Strong Black Woman

granny

This season has been one filled with death for my blood and church families: loss jobs, broken marriages, foreclosed homes, dissolved friendships, and transitioned loved ones. What’s impacted me most is the loss of my Granny, Brunice C. Lewis, my husband’s grandmother. She, like many family matriarchs, was strong, a rock in our family. Granny worked for years as a domestic cook for a wealthy family, but didn’t give all her love and skills to them. She planned and cooked all our holiday meals, bought us gifts apart from holidays, loaned us money, scolded bad deeds, loved us whole. With Granny’s death, we loss the security of a loving woman who took away the need to be strong. She was our strength, the rock on which we leaned. And her death has been causing me to reflect on some lessons that I thought I learned as a recovering strong black woman.

The first lesson is that our trust and hope can’t be in our grannies and big mommas. As much as we love them, as much as they do for us, as much as life knocked them down and they kept getting back up, they cannot be our gods. In our hoping in and running to them for needs we unknowingly deified them. We remember the stories and have seen their lives of how they got over and we know they can help us get over. But many big mommas will tell you up front, “If it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t have made it.” Hearing their war stories gives us strength, and we often go back to hear the stories as if the stories themselves are the source of our power. But God says, “When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up—the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, your Savior, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 43:2-3a TLB). God is the source of our power and He is the only one who can save. As I recover from the many deaths in my families, particularly my Granny’s death, and from being a self-empowered strong black woman, I remember that Granny did nothing and I can do nothing without the Rock, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

For six years it’s been, me toying with the notion of the strong black woman. Who is she? Who am I? How is she doing? What should she be doing? Should she even be? Should I even be this iconic superwoman? Well I believe the answers to these questions will inevitably surface as I muse on this topic and receive your responses to this woman that we all know. She is our friend. She is our mother. She is our grandmother. She is our pastor. She is we. But is she something that enlightened 21^st Century women should claim, particularly those whose faith is based on the ways, will and word of Jesus Christ? My husband calls me strong. All my friends seek my strength. Those I minister to embrace my virtue. My skin color reveals that I am what we call black. And my biological and physiological makeup undoubtedly make me a female human. So ain’t I a strong black woman? Stay tuned.

Musings of a (Recovering) Strong Black Woman

Monthly Archives: December 2008

Death of a Superwoman

The Musings of a (Recovering) Strong Black Woman aka Superwoman