Day 11: One of Those Days

I kept hearing another tune about her, one that would prompt me to compose a poem but the rhythm was stilted; it just wouldn’t come. There would be ebbs and flows and then I had to let go because the poem about the strong black woman just wouldn’t come. I was examining her history, seeing how she came to be, even be me, but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe they stayed away because they didn’t want to add to my already crowded day. As I kept inviting them in, their refusal helped me to see that my day is what I should share. Yeah, it’s been one of those days. Continue reading

Day 6: Losing It, Part 4

In my family I watched my grandmother juggle her many lives: part-time domestic or cook; full-time homemaker; block club secretary; church missionary, Sunday school teacher and trustee; wife; mother; and friend. She did all with pizzazz, I thought. She was the tower of strength that we all leaned on. But the day my sister witnessed her “breakdown,” I knew that the pressure from being all things to all people, particularly her husband, had worn her out. During a usual moment of historical pride about providing for his family and never having to go on welfare he mentioned being “the head” of the house. Like a mother scolding her child for the umpteenth time for the same offense, my grandmother uncharacteristically cursed my grandfather and told him she was the head. She was unapologetic, self-satisfied, for claiming her place, one she believed she walked in without the proper recognition.

But my sister and I were in shock. She called me right after she left their house. We talked about all the years my grandmother, then in their early 80s, had given service with a smile, submission with gladness, yet subversively had been hiding her true feelings. We reflected on the clues of her marital dissatisfaction: the whispered conversations about his ineptness, the hidden stash of money, and the short silent treatments when she was annoyed.

I believe my aunt and mother saw all these clues of her misery through the smiles and pledged to live domestic life differently. My aunt was vocal about her role as a wife. “I’m not doing like Mama. She worked herself to the bone and served Daddy. Unh, unh. Not me.” My mother’s actions said the same. She did not clean; my daddy cooked; and she was always involved outside the home, rallying for women. Her love for women really began as an undergraduate student.

Copyright 2006-2010 by Rhonda J. Smith

Day 4: Losing It, Part 2

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

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

Day 2: Strong Black Women Rubbish

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