Category Archives: Recovery

Day 4: Losing It, Part 2

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I am not alone. Life in the 30s for me and most women I know is an ebb and flow of wanting to live and wanting to die. Our conversations are sprinkled with the hope a new project brings and the lament of what a new project means to our lives. We want to live, to carry out the life we have established, but sometimes death seems an easier escape, if not death from this world but death to this life to live another life.

After establishing our personal and career identities in our 20s we are now left trying to gather 30-something identities using 20-something zeal. We plunge into life with a reckless abandon that has wrecked havoc on post-partum bodies and “thinking for everyone” minds. No longer are we free or able to stay on the go. We have children and husbands and ministries and more grown-up ideas and ideals that don’t fit a 20-something paradigm. And God is expecting more from us or has always expected more; we just don’t look to him as much. We have no reason to. We have our career and cars, friends and fun and clothes. We are the closest things we know to stars. And now, we still want to have it all, to be stars, but we realize the great cost that has to be paid to have it all. The price for many of us is therapy or Zoloft, Zanax or Prozac. We spend time on couches and chairs and in a dazed reality to help us deal with the reality that had us crying out for help.

You see, I fell apart because I was striving to be what all strong black women are told to be: everything to everybody, including yourself. You have to be the best you that you can be. So on top of meeting everyone else’s needs we must be highly educated, seek high-paying jobs, be extremely well-groomed, make the right social networks, exercise and eat right. This “truth” is impossible though for years black women have walked this path, only to be afflicted with sugar (diabetes), high blood pressure, cancer, strokes and heart problems (congestive heart failure, heart attacks and angina). I wanted to die because I saw death as my greatest relief to a life I didn’t know how to change. I no longer wanted to do it all to have it all, but that’s all I knew to do. I knew doing it all was killing me, but, like my foremothers, I wanted to be valiant to the end. I wanted people to say something like, “She has always handled things so well. She’ll be okay.” Or “I know she’ll bounce back. She always lands on her feet.” I wanted to be valiant until the end, and if some lifestyle-related illness unexpectedly killed me, I wanted to be known as the greatest martyr. This is all I knew, and this is all so many talented, educated, intelligent, black Christian women know. It’s the life of a strong black woman (SBW).

Copyright 2006-2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Day 3: Losing It, Part 1

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Photo Credit: Miss Hag, flickr.com

I fell apart.

I was driving on the freeway and an 18-wheeler speeding next to me lost control of his rig and headed toward me. I kept driving. I didn’t slam on my brakes or turn away from the truck. I kept driving straight in my lane as the 18-wheeler was coming into my lane.

I fell apart.

I didn’t think about my baby, my husband, my mother. Not my father, my sister, nor my brother. I didn’t wonder about friends, my students, my church. I just wanted the truck to hit me, to kill me. I just wanted to be with Jesus.
This wasn’t the first time I fell apart. There was the time when I snapped at my husband for turning the light on so I could see. Then there were the times of bursting in tears and staring in space with periodic screams to fill the silence. I would rock back and forth while sitting on the edge of my bed or walk aimlessly around the house.

I fell apart.

I fell apart at these times, but the 18-wheeler time was different. This time I was beyond despair. My depression had gone from tears to tainted thoughts of a different life, the afterlife, one away from the pressures of life. One with Jesus.

I had never been suicidal before, at least not since my teen years. After the 18-wheeler regained control of his truck I returned to normal: I burst into tears, stared into space and screamed periodically. I wondered how I—a Christian, wife, mother, college professor, church leader, daughter, sister, friend, counselor, had gotten here. How had I gone so far as to want to kill myself?

I had a “perfect” life: A wonderful husband, a precocious little boy, a tenured job, leadership positions at my church and lots of friends. I was a writer who enjoyed scripting and presenting poetry. How had I gone so far? I had a wonderful, full life. Why did I want to kill myself?

Maybe the answer seems clear: My life was too full, weighing me down until I felt I could no longer go on. I had too much going on in my life; I was trying to be too much for too many people. I was taking on assignments and not completing them well. I was forgetting appointments, staying up late and getting up early. I was driving all over town to meet obligations and had a host of stress-related issues to tend to. The pressure was tough, but I felt I had to do it. This was my life. This was my lot. I was falling apart from the pressure of being a strong black woman.

Copyright 2006-2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

My Testimony

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As I look back over my life
And I think things over I can truly say that I’ve been blessed
I’ve got a testimony–I’ve Got a Testimony by the Rev. Clay Evans

On Monday and Wednesday I gave you the introduction to my strong black woman testimony. Over the last year and a half you have gotten glimpses into aspects of this story, but next Monday takes you to the beginning of my breaking point. Tune in to see how my struggle to hold on to being a strong black woman almost broke me. I look forward to your feedback.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Day 2: Strong Black Women Rubbish

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Since the time of black American slavery (some even dare say before, on the continent of Africa), black women have been considered the center of the black family. Matriarchy, the argument goes, has been necessary because black women have been in the position to support the family without being a threat, as the black man is, to the white power structure. Black women’s leadership, regardless of the reason, has led to us being what writer Zora Neale Hurston called the “mules of society.”

Our hard work has also generated many stereotypes, including the domestic and domineering Aunt Jemima and mammy, and the sassy Sapphire. As a result of these stereotypes, many see black women as overbearing. Some of us don’t consider ourselves domineering; we choose to call ourselves strong black women (SBW). Like some blacks who have reclaimed the word nigger as a term of endearment, black women have embraced the label strong black woman without fully recognizing its detrimental effects. This is the reason I have written this book: To tell us that it is no longer time for us to believe our strength is in sitting on the term strong black women.

I believe that the SBW that emerged from negative stereotypes is a myth that black women have welcomed to their detriment. I am not the only one who argues this; Scholar/writer/activist/feminists Angela Y. Davis and bell hooks, and others–including most recently Sheri Parks in Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture–advocate controlling, perhaps destroying, the mythical SBW. They say believing this myth has led to black women, indeed, being the “mules of society” and have left them mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally unhealthy. Some suggest a humanist approach to self-healing and creating healthy families, including lesbian homes. But I know the only way healing and healthy families come about is by following God’s design for family and the woman, without giving priority to race.

Black Christian women have embraced the SBW, a label that even leading feminists are rejecting. Buying into this myth has caused many black Christian women to become deluded to the point that we compete with each other, have been deceived by each other, are haughty, and lack submission. Unfortunately, we have taught our daughters how to be SBW, and the satanical cycle will continue if we don’t recognize the source of contention in our homes.

This book exposes how the SBW myth is still being peddled in the media and is wrecking havoc in black Christian women’s lives—personally, with each other, with our boyfriends and spouses, and with our daughters. Black Christian women need to continue to rid ourselves of pride, covetousness, envy, and competition, which I believe largely stem from the notion of what it means to be a strong black woman. Destroying the Myth of the Strong Black Woman gives clear direction in how to shed the myth and embrace what God labels a strong woman.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Right that Strong Black Woman Book

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As promised on Friday, today I begin posting excerpts from a draft of my book on the strong black woman. If you look over the course of my life, this book has been in the making since I was about 5. I began writing it, however, about 10 years ago. Over the decade there has been a host of articles, talk shows, lectures and books on this topic. Most recently, Sheri Parks published Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture and Hasani Pettiford published Why We Hate Black Women. While these books deal with stereotypes surrounding strong black women and even delve into areas of spirituality, neither offers a Christian worldview. My work does. If you have been following this blog, you know that I believe Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of my faith. So any conclusions that I come to about who I am have to be words based on what Jesus says. So from my book with the working title Destroying the Myth of the Strong Black Woman, I present to you a portion of the foreword:

    “Their strength is to sit still. Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. . .” Isaiah 30:7b-8.

When God tells you to do something, you better do it, even if the task is harsh; you think people won’t like you, that people will attack you. Such was the case with completing Destroying the Myth of the Strong Black Woman. I didn’t feel this way in the beginning. I first thought, “God gave me this book to help set black women free. This is going to be good. I and so many women I know have these issues. People need this book.” And hundreds of women and men I talked to and interviewed supported my thinking. So did one mainstream publisher whose only apprehension was backlash from the black community. A white editor wanted to know what the black community would feel about some of its dirty laundry being aired. This sentiment kept them from publishing my book. But now here I am, because when God tells you to do something, you better do it, even if the task is harsh, you think people won’t like you, that people will attack you.

So, this is a forewarning. You may think what I have written is harsh; you may not like me; you may even attack me. I can deal with that. What I can’t deal with is the repercussions of God showing me something so clearly, telling me to write it, and disobeying Him for fear of man. This book is my debt to my God who entrusted my limbs to deliver a message, one that is hard-hitting but redeeming for me. When I examined the history of my independence and pride in being a strong black woman I recognized little of my walk had been with God. . . .

More of my story from the book next time

Copyright 2006-2010 by Rhonda J. Smith