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(based on Audre Lordes Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger)
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MOTHER OURSELVES
(The Manifesta!)
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Distilled from Audre Lordes Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger
- from Black Mother Woman in From A Land Where Other People Live (1973)
The bus driver didnt look at other people that way. All the things my mother had
told me not to do and be that I had gone right ahead and done and been must be to
blame. from Eye to Eye (p 146)
Within an oppressed group inside an oppressive society, mothering can be the name for
discipline: how we learn to conform to societys expectations. The trap is that for those of us who
are neither expected, accepted, nor embraced by societal norms(which include, racism, sexism,
ableism, classism, homophobia and more) it is impossible to fit.
Im afraid to say anything to my mother because I dont know what Ive done.
(p 148)
Oppression, which systemically punishes us for being ourselves, also hides itself. If we believe in
meritocracy and other widely pushed myths, we can believe that our experiences of oppression are
punishment for bad behavior on our part. Our shame keeps us from reaching out to the people
around us as resources in painful moments. Those of us who cannot depend on systems of fairness
can look to ourselves as constant culprits when everything seems wrong.
In other words, we transpose the image of that first person who taught us we would be rewarded for
doing and being right, and punished for doing wrong onto society. But no amount of discipline will
exempt us from oppression. And society is not our mother, it did not create us, and it cannot even
contain or comprehend the depth of our purpose and power.
BLAME GAME
Make a list of things that you have blamed yourself for in the past that you now
realize were/are beyond your individual control.
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The costs of the blame game are interdependence and accountability. We cannot build community,
reach out for help or be accountable to each other if we believe that we are fundamentally wrong.
As June Jordan says Wrong is not my name. (from Poem About My Rights)
I like to say it outloud. Try it!: I am who I am doing what I came to do!
During an experience of intense ableist oppression during an eye exam where medical workers
assumed that her vision impairment and the fact that she was a little black girl meant she was not
only impervious to pain but also unable to understand their demeaning conversation about her.
I huddle into the tall metal and leather chair frightened and miserable and
wanting my mother.-Eye to Eye (p148)
According to Lorde, her mother was not a particularly cuddly person, but there was something,
symbolized through her mother, that Audre Lorde as a young child recognized as salvation from her
painful situation.
Audre Lorde says to herself what many people have said in moments of desperation.
I want my mother!
This point in the meditation is about providing some descriptive depth to what it is we are actually
desiring in moments when we might say or think something similar to I want my mommy! or I
want to go home! in a young, frustrated, desperate voice, on the verge of tears, fully exhausted.
Remember a time that you felt all of the above freewrite a list of what you are actually craving in
that moment. Small or cosmic just be as specific as you can.
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And as we remember that our need for each other and a transformed world is beautiful in its
specificity.
Ye-Yo by Erykah Badu
3. Survival Mode
In my daughters name
I bless your child with the mother she has
With a future of warriors of growing fire.
But with tenderness also,
For we are landscapes, Toni,
Printed upon them as surely
as water etches feather on stone.
Our girls will grow into their own
Black Women
Finding their own contradictions
That they will come to love
as I love you.
From Dear Toni in From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)
In the context of oppression, mothering can become a very basic thing. For some the measure of
whether mothering has happened or not is whether a living breathing adult emerges at the other side
of the experiment. It can become a very pragmatic relationship. And we begin to relate to ourselves
in survival mode, that form of almost living designed to help us just get through it.
Survival is the greatest gift of love. Sometimes for Black mothers it is the only
gift possible. (Eye to Eye,150)
Lordes perspective reminds us that for people facing multiple oppressions, surviving at all, let alone
feeding and protecting a more vulnerable person is no small feat. Survival is the greatest gift of
love. We can honor and hold gratitude for the survival strategies that have allowed us to be here in
this room despite everything.
But SINCE survival is the greatest gift of love, mothering ourselves means transforming the
meaning of survival to include the emotional and spiritual nurturing of life. Honestly evaluating
the methods of survival that we have grown up with, and used ourselves does not contradict any
gratitude we feel to those people who have helped us survive.
My mother taught me to survive from a very early age by her example. Her silences
taught me isolation, fury, mistrust, self-rejection and sadness. (Eye to Eye, 149)
My mother taught me to survive at the same time that she taught me to fear my own
blackness. (Eye to Eye, 165)
Examination of methods:
What are methods or personal strategies that have helped you through that may not be
useful to you anymore...may not be useful for the world you are committed to creating.
What do you want to create?
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from My Daughter the Junkie on a Train in New York Head Shop and Museum
(1974)
Audre Lorde describes her own frustration as a mother, knowing that she can never fully prepare her
children for the depth of oppression they will face in their lives, but that since she chose to help them
survive, she has to watch them navigate that world, often without her help.
Black women give our children forth into a hatred that seared our own young
days with bewilderment, hoping we have taught them something they can use to
fashion their own new and less costly pathways to survival. Knowing I did not slit
their throats at birth or tear out the tiny beating heart with my own despairing
teeth the way some sisters did in the slaveships chained to coprses and therefore I
was committed to this very moment. (Eye to Eye 158)
Like many of us, she wishes she didnt have to see her children, or any young people suffer.
Sometimes we project our hope for the future onto young people so strongly that we deeply
internalize their suffering.
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5. Love as a Scarce Prize
My sister has my tongue
and all my flesh
unanswered
and I presume her trustless
as a stone.
Some of our default understandings of mothering are based on scarcity. If we just had the full love
and attention of our mothers, we wouldnt feel isolated, afraid, stressed, stupidhowever we dont
want to feel. But what we think of as full acceptance from a mother figure may be deeper and wider
than what one person can provide in any moment.
no other Black woman would ever see who she was or be trusted by her again.
(Eye to Eye, 158)
Scarcity teaches us that there is only one possible source for all our human needs. So in default
mode, instead of creating and nurturing as many mutually supportive relationships in as many
ways as possible, and giving ourselves the unconditional love we deserve, we blame other people for
our lack of access to love. Sometimes we even believe that we are competing for love.
One woman has eyes like my sister who never forgave me for appearing before she
had a chance to win her mothers love, as if anybody ever could. (Eye to Eye, 155)
While thinking about how this idea of scarcity and competition manifests in my own life, and
sometimes gets in the way of my relationships with other women of color, I wrote my own version of
Lorde A Family Resemblance called This Sista.
This Sista
If we can learn to give ourselves the recognition and acceptance that we have
come to expect only from our mommas, Black women will be able to see each other
much more clearly and deal with each other more directly. (Eye to Eye, 159)
Exercise:
Think about a time that you have not been able to STAND another woman of color.
Think about the reflection of yourself you might have seen, the competition you might
have felt pitted against her in. Start a letter that you might never give her about what
happened and what is now possible now that you remember that love is abundant and
infinite and that we are all deeply interconnected. (What is possible might not be
becoming best friends and cuddling. It might be respectful distance, strategic
collaboration, another try or anything else that your abundant heart tells you.)
Have fun!
!"The Power Playlist !:
We recommend this high energy and soulful playlist for any time of day,
but especially first thing in the morning!
We recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always
understanding what will be created.
!"Climbing Poetree "I Wonder"
We claim power over who we choose to be, knowing that such power is relative within
the realities of our lives.
!"Amel Larrieux "All I Got"
We affirm our own worth by committing ourselves to our own survival in our selves
and in the selves of other black women.
!"Lauryn Hill "If They Only Knew"
We refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the possible in
ourselves, at the same time making a distinction between what is possible, and what
the outside world drives us to do in order to prove that we are human.
!"Santigold "Unstoppable"
We recognize our successes and are tender with ourselves even when we fail.
!"Res "Leave Here Tomorrow"
We learn to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, to be both kind
and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success without
misnaming either.
!"Erykah Badu "My Life"
We lay to rest what is weak, timid and damaged without despisal and we protect and
support what is useful for survival. We explore the difference together.
!"Georgia Ann Muldrow "Runway"
We stand toe-to-toe inside rigorous loving and speak what has always seemed like the
impossible to each other.
!"Tata Vega, "Miss Celie's Blues"
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Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind
(blackfeministmind.wordpress.com)
School of Our Lorde
(summerofourlorde.wordpress.com)
BrokenBeautiful Press
(brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com)