IF YOUR FAMILY PUSHES YOU AWAY FOR STANDING UP FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE RIGHT, I’M YA FAMILY NOW.
I lost my entire family. You want to know what caused my break with my own mother? MY OWN MOTHER? I said, "If you can't be not mean to me, I can't be around you." You want to know how THAT happened?
Her driving had been a problem all of her children wanted to address. But my specific problem was because I have been in 5 car accidents & suffered whip lash in 25, 35, & 55 mph accidents. A lurching stop gives me migraines for days, will throw a vertebrae out of alignment cause pain and require expensive care for weeks, & blinding pain in my eyes for days & I can't work. SO I told her this. I didn't ask her not to drive. I just asked if my husband could drive when we went out together. She would not give up driving, would not change how she sped up to red lights & slammed on the breaks, & actually started doing it more.
THINK ABOUT IT: I asked the woman who birthed me to let a person who knew how to drive without hurting me to drive for 10 minutes every week or so when we were together. I had not addressed her racism, her abuse, her xenophobia, her sexism, her touching male waiters, her hugging in a way that kept me from breathing.
I simply asked her to not make lurching stops that triggered traumatic brain injuries & soft tissue damage that relinquished my ability to live for weeks. So after this fight, I put it down in one sentence. "If you can't be not mean, I can't be around you. I don't even need you to be actively nice. I just need you to stop hurting me."
She could not do it. It took me having my traumatic brain injuries & ripped platisma injuries willfully triggered for me to see that her behavior was intolerable.
I had been steeped in abuse, racism, addiction, personality disorders, & unspeakable abuse my entire life. I had been in recovery of such systems the whole of my adult life. But it still took life altering injuries for me to see that the worst offenders were my own family.
The first day of therapy, I went for anxiety, my doctor asked me to describe my childhood. I was vague and said it was fine. I talked about the nice things my parents did. I said it was fine. No big deal. I mean, you know, like everybody else's, I guess. So he started asking me 10 questions.
I answered yes to every single one. I STILL had no point of view to understand the complexity of what this meant. Our next visit, he set for 2 weeks away. I know he did this to give me time to reflect on my answers. I stewed for 2 weeks. I looked up the test he gave me.
I started remembering things. Like being forced to pick out bigger & thornier coral tree branches my father would use to beat me. Like considering suicide as a 10 year old child. Like surviving violent gun episodes. Like being born into an abusive system so complex, so varied, so ingrained THAT I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT.
I went to therapy for anxiety & DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I'D SURVIVED THE WORST ABUSE parents can dish out.
Now imagine if you had grown up right along side of me & you never saw the abuse, never heard the screams, never saw the rapes. How easy would it be to consider that everything inside my home, the one with the perfect rose bushes leading up the big house with lush lawns and nice cars outside, to not be aware. How easy would it be to say that things looked ok to you? How easy would it be for me to think, "Oh, this must be normal, this must be ok, everybody must live like this."
I'm talking about my childhood right now.
But I am also talking about our country right now.
Most white people have never been exposed to the type of systemic, racial injustice & abuse that our brothers & sisters go through every day. They score a 10 out of 10 on the Racial Injustice quiz. They have tried to tell us over & over again.
As a country, we have not listened. We have pandered & cajoled, & ignored. We have hoped it wasn't going on. We looked up the rose lined steps & imagined that the inside of their house was just like the inside of our house. But it isn't.
Now imagine, growing up like I did, where the abuse was so normalized that it took something big to make you see it. It took a 10/10 score on a test for me to see it. George Floyd's murder was like that test. It took a horrific, torturous murder, in front of everyone, by a man that acted like he was getting his shoes polished, for us to wake up & see. We then reflected: Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner
And those of us who listened got out beside our black brothers & sisters & we walked beside them & we called for change.
If you can't be non-violent then you can't be police officers.
Protect & Serve.
Like mothers & fathers they should be here to protect & serve us.
But that isn't what they are doing.
They are out here killing us.
Raping us.
Abusing us.
Targeting us.
Using our trauma to fund their system.
Stealing mothers & fathers & brothers & sisters.
Black people score a 10/10 on the country abuse test.
We want to protect children but why do we think that any of this is OK for our fellow country men and women?
Why can't we say, "The way we are driving is killing you, here, why don't you take the wheel?"
Why can't the people behind the wheel see what they are doing? Or maybe, just maybe, like my parents, it was what they wanted to do? All parents are not the same. Why can't we see that all cops are not the same either?
That you might have met a nice cop who did something nice to you one day is a nice story & can make you feel OK about your choices to not be a part of BLM.
But we have to listen to the passengers in the car. We've got to listen to the history they have lived. Rosewood massacre. Tulsa Black Wall Street burned down. Lynchings. Rapes. Colfax massacre. Wilmington massacre. Atlanta massacre. The list is goes on & on & on.
AND WE HAVE IGNORED IT. We have hoped it would go away. We wished it wasn't a problem. Some of us have even encouraged it, "we will give them something to cry about, by god!" NO MORE. We are taking the wheel out of the driver's hands.
We are taking responsibility for the passengers. We are going to rewrite the system so it is caregivers not life takers. We are going to create a system built on recovery, stewardship, & responsibility.
And those left behind that cling to their wheel of abuse, will die alone and miserable just like my mother did. THAT is the choice right now. Be a part of the solution or get the hell out the way.
The choice now is abuse or virtue. You have a chance right now to see the abuse. To educate yourself on what goes on behind that closed we assumed was just fine. The time to peel back the wool over your eyes is now. Or you'll be left behind.
A relic of a world that should not have existed in the first place.
One fight.
One goal.
One solution.
Stop abuse.
Protect the vulnerable.
Build a system based on virtue.
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