Black Audacity

Yet I was eager to rush out of puberty to lay with men who whispered to me during unemotional, robotic sex how beautiful I was. In my own need to be desired, wanted and told that I was beautiful, I stayed in beds that were not safe spaces for me. I stayed in “relationships” that did not feed, or nurture me. Showed up more bruised and fragmented than whole, begging for someone to patch me back together — who would do this without asking for my soul in return. Desperately, wanting someone to hold all my jagged edges in their hands, hold onto me even if i made them bleed? I was bleeding and needing to be loved.

Thus, I wish I could declare a state of emergency. Little black girls are in need of critical care! Our care! I often wonder why as womyn and especially black womyn, we cannot see that little black girls need our approval and our attention. Black fathers, do you tell your daughters that they are beautiful? If not, I will warn you without any doubt that another man is dying to whisper something in her ear. Our little black girls need to be praised, honoured and admired. They should be told daily that they are beautiful and if they are given those messages early and often enough they may start to believe it.