Survivors Remorse: The Myth of the Single Mother

What’s in a Name

Alicia means nobility. I can imagine my cocoa-colored father lifting me up to my ancestors, blessing me with the name. I can't imagine the hopes and dreams of my creators that were embedded in me before I even knew who I was or what my place was in  a world that despises Black womxn and minimizes their struggle. I can imagine the mothers who birthed my lineage with stretch marks and bleeding and crying and death but also beauty and poise and strength and resilience, pouring all of their hopes into my body. It is the sting of endurance; it is the tattered Superwoman Cape that almost killed me.

 Get the Shackles off my feet

Scrolling through memes as I often do, I recently saw one that said, “ The girls who always got talkative on their report cards are powerful af”. I hollered at this meme, knowing that this was a 90s girls staple to be classified as “talkative”. I often wonder when we as Black womxn went from “talkative” to completely silent at times enduring suffering and protecting those who hurt us. Shackles have always been on our feet from the auction block to the gaslighting from those that we entrusted with our innermost experiences. Narcissists weaponise intimacy, the house of whispers that are told in deep confidence are then turned around and used for violence to “expose”. This mental abuse is a musty hand on the mouths of the truth choking down our shortcomings, follies and missteps of womanhood. I believe shackles are on every Black womxn, it keeps them from speaking their truth, it prevents them from screaming out loud in dark spaces or calling out misogyny in boardrooms. Silence accosts our vocal cords and straps us into seats of isolation as we become participants in our own misery, while onlookers believe we like it. These cold and heavy shackles prevent us from letting others know that we are here, that we are human, that we feel like everyone else.  Even as I write I think about Meg thee Stallion who in true Black womxn wanted to protect the Black man who committed violence against her just because that is what she has been taught. What I know is that Black womxn have always protected Black men even at the detriment of themselves, forgoing all sense and sensibility to protect egos, to protect personas and to uphold fictitious and performative masculinity. Something in our rearing has said that, “You do not and should never come first”. Even as I write, I write in a ball of protection because that is what I have been taught and need to unlearn. Your violators should not be the ones that you are so quick to prostrate your body over as hails of bullets fly, especially when they would not dare take a bullet for you. 

The Doctors orders

Motherhood has always been linked to trauma and abandonment for me, much like parts of my childhood. No ridiculous gender reveals, not baby showers filled with frills and love, not smiles to your child upon entry but trauma, a darkness so blinding that makes it feel that you are not alive and a participant in this life. As a naive teenager I’d tell my best friend that I wanted a house full of children. I still gush when I see babies, making funny faces and having spilling tea with them as though I know what their baby babble is all about. Though I know motherhood is a beautiful experience my own was built upon pain, emotional and mental abuse , confusion and self hatred. I am still ashamed sometimes to utter out loud that the day my amazing child came into this world was one of the darkest days of my life. Striving to heal things much like my therapist tells me, “Speak it, stand in it, heal it, move on”. I’ve learned that my healing is being the author of my own truth, my own story in the hopes that another woman can heal as well. My healing comes in giving my pain a name, a sound, giving it just enough breath to sit next to me rather than fester inside my body.

The first night of my motherhood was spent with my sorority sisters. The love they wrapped me in like a warm blanket in New England cold. I will forever cherish those moments as I quickly equated motherhood with sisterhood. They shuffled me back and forth to the bathroom holding on to their shoulders as we did strolling in college parties at our beloved Virginia Union University. We laughed and joked as if we were back in college and as I laughed until my stitches almost burst, I failed to realize that the absence of the person I created life with was a foreshadowed of my life as a mother. 

Daddy’s Girl

I had always foolishly assumed that every man was like my father. He was the father of the fatherless, showing up to all of his daughters events there was not a school play, dance recital, basketball game or choir performance that he would miss. At times in high school I’d bump into him at football games and he’d say I promised *insert any one of our guy friends names* I’d come to his game”. I’d always laugh and roll my eyes, reminding him that he didn’t have any sons, but he did; they were all his kids and he was always a provider and protector for those in need. When I hesitantly told my father that I was pregnant weeks before my college graduation, one of the realest things he said to me was, “ Having a baby is more than a notion”, those words have been embossed in my mind for 12 years.  

Absence, it is the darkness that has crept upon the napes of my back keeping me silenced and subdued. It is the gaze upon “normal families” knowing that my choices have robbed my son of a family that is whole. This is the darkness many single mothers experience but never speak of, the shame that they feel is often the shame heaped upon them by society that tells them their worth is tied to marriage or a man. This shame is further exacerbated in church houses that double as dating services for single mothers because being unwed has been unacceptable in our communities. The “bitter single mother” is a myth I have seen on various social media outlets. The dehumanization of Black womxn is only magnified  in single motherhood. Many see it as bitterness, when it truly is trauma, justified anger and disappointment. There is a certain stinging disappointment, the disappointment of the representative versus the actual person you created life with. The promises that have been broken a million times over,  the expectations that have never been met and the hurtful words that have been spoken upon you, your life and that of your child’s through inaction.There is a sting in self disappointment and inadequacy that has you asking, “Am I doing enough”? “Am I enough”? Can I do more”?  Disappointment keeps us on cold tiles crying as small hands bang on the doors because God forbid we are seen in our human form. Single motherhood is the constant feeling of guilt, the venomous accusations of victimhood rather than survival, the wanting and wishing for more, but understanding that at the time that was the best that you could do. The villainization of single Black mothers just further helps me understand  societies hate for women, particularly Black womxn, this ingrained hate supersedes the hate for absent or inactive fathers. The proof is in the pudding, you always hear about the villainous Cruella D Vil like a single mother and less about the fathers who have checked out or never checked into parenting.  The trope of the single mothers or “baby mamas” are  spiteful and bitter, using child support checks for their own gain clad with acrylics and bushels of crab legs, pushes the narrative that mothers of Black children are trying to come up rather than survive. The survival is the dispel of the actual myth. The disappointment is the dispel of bitterness. What I have learned is that you do not know what you do not know.  You are equipped with the parental tools that you are given and it seems that Black men are often given the short end of the stick. Parental tools are tools that you are given from your parental experience and rearing whilst you pick up tools along the way. The expectations that I imposed, I quickly realized were not my reality. This disappointment kept me often up at night, had me questioning my own poor choices and had me wondering about the future of my Black son in a world that has written him off before he's uttered a word. The strength that I needed was not there so I built a cocoon around him praying to God that it would protect him from such violence. I implore single mothers to create their own healthy villages that are affirming and loving, outside of the toxicity their children may have been bore into. Motherhood is not a destination but a journey for us all and you cannot be everything to everyone (including your children) and be nothing to yourself.  Mothers deserve to live and not solely survive. 

Speak it, stand in it, heal it

Healing has been a continuous journey. Healing has been a mountain that I have climbed all the way to the top, chest high to Oshu and one that I have completely fallen from losing my footing on dirt roads and tumbled to the bottom.  Healing is a journey in which single mothers must face themselves. They must ask hard questions, but also develop an empathy and understanding of their younger selves. Mothers must know why they chose what they chose and who they chose. Healing as a single mother has been much of facing myself, accepting who I was in mirrors when no one was there  and accepting who I am now,  never regretting a minute of it. Understanding our journeys as Black womxn means accepting the fact that we are not perfect, we have and will make mistakes. We are not always whole and we are always looking and striving for more, for better and most importantly for ourselves as women first and then as mothers. Black mothers must choose them everyday because in choosing them they choose their children.