So I’m just going to write because I feel that it always saves me. I always feel better after I do. It leads me into my pain and carries me out on the other side. So, I know I made this big goal this year to write a memoir, and I have been working my ass off on it. It is going to be amazing. But right now I don’t even think my memory works. I am smack dab in the middle of another rock bottom moment in my life and I can’t write to tell the story of what has happened in my life, I need to write for my life. I need to show up at my laptop each day that I am strong enough to and write whatever the fuck comes out of my bleeding heart and confused mind onto the page. And then I need to do the really scary thing of giving you access to it. Because that’s who I am. That’s how I heal. And thats how my work heals others.
So as interesting as what happened to me when I was 12 years old is, I am not 12 right now. I am 32, right on the cusp of turning 33 and I am fucking sad. I am in pain. I guess I should write about what got me back to this place but I equally don’t think it’s relevant and am equally ashamed to share it so I am cowering away from doing that. But what I will say is that on Saturday one of my worst fears came true. No one died. No one got sick. There was no tragic accident or disaster. I failed. Yes, you read that right. Failure is what my worse fear was. At least I feel like I failed. And on this paper what I feel is valid even if it is not the truth. Whether it’s the truth or not doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I remember being a kid and making vows. I remember experiencing painful things from authority figures in my life and vowing to myself and to God “I will NEVER do that to my kid”. “I will NEVER make my kid feel this way”. “I will NEVER put my kid in this situation”. I vowed. I promised. Cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye. And then when I became a mother, accidentally might I add, those vows became poison to be. My whole life was/has been/is working my ass off, sacrificing everything, killing myself in order to make sure that I NEVER break those vows I made now that I am a mother of daughters as deserving of love, security, education, etc etc as I was. I believe in vows. Honesty is of high importance to me. I bend over backwards never to break a promise. But on Saturday I broke a big vow that I had made to myself, to God, and to my kids. I broke my promise. My word became false and weak and a lie. I promised my kids that I would ALWAYS make sure they were in school. That they would never be turned away from school because of money. For those of you who don’t live here or in other places where you know what school fees are and you know what it means to be turned away from school for not having paid them, ask a friend. I am not going to explain the whole thing here. That’s not what I am here for. But, after saying goodbye to 2 of my girls on Tuesday as they began their journey back to boarding school in a nearby town I did what I always do. I bent over backwards to come up with the money to pay for their school fees. I hadn’t succeeded in paying their fees on the correct date before they were admitted to school, but I held true to that vow I had made and did everything I knew how to make sure that I paid their fees ASAP so they would not be sent away from school. The funny thing is, I wasn’t even worried about the possibility that that would happen. I mean, that doesn’t happen to my kids. It never would. I promised. No matter what it took, and it has taken A LOT, I absolutely ALWAYS make sure to pay school fees for my children and keep them in school. Their right to education is something I have drilled into them since I met them, since they were like 9 and 10 years old. They know that Mummy will always make sure that they are in school because it’s their right to be educated and in the classroom instead of in the system of sexual exploitation I found them. Only problem is, I failed. I didn’t come up with enough money for all the girls’ school fees and two of them were sent home completely unexpectedly on Saturday. I was actually napping when I got the call that the school had kicked them out. Two things: first, I know I said I wasn’t going to explain the background and I totally just did, but that’s just what happened I don’t care. Second, I am not an idiot. I know that there are thousands and thousands of mothers and children that go through this ALL THE TIME. Like, to most people, this really isn’t a big deal at all. My kids are privileged to have gotten this far without ever having missed one day of school because of school fees since they met me. I am privileged to have so many people who sponsor my girls’ education and have for years, almost a decade, many who have never missed a payment. Thank you to those of you who make your sponsorship payments, and to those of you who didn’t and your sponsored child was kicked out of school, this isn’t about you. They are not your responsibility. They are mine. You are being kind and generous and doing what you can. It’s my job to fill in the gaps no matter what.
But anyway, my point is: I know that two girls being kicked out of school for school fees on Saturday, and then me coming up with the money to pay the school fees and sending them right back to school on Sunday isn’t necessarily a huge deal, even to my kids. This is about me and feeling like I have proven a point to myself that I have fought against for so many years, the point being “You are a bad mother”. I remember how traumatic it was for me as a kid when my basic needs weren’t met (which is no one’s fault) and I totally projected that pain onto my 2 daughters even if that wasn’t their experience. I immediately made up the story in my head. Actually, it didn’t happen immediately. First came the shock. And then the denial. And then the realization. And then the crash. The story I had been running away from why whole motherhood journey crashed into my reality. And my “reality” became: I am exactly what I said I would never be. I am a single black mother who isn’t able to provide her kids with their basic needs and therefore is traumatizing them forever and so they are going to grow up and be as fucked up in the head as me and spend their whole life’s earnings on therapy trying to heal from all the trauma that being my daughter has caused them. I have recreated more Little Brittanies. Little Brittanies are bad and traumatized and emotional and fucked up and sick and need to be fixed and will have to spend a lifetime trying to be fixed and be normal but deep inside Big Brittanie knows that Little Brittanie will never be okay and normal and fully healed. Little Brittanies grow up to be Big Brittanies and Big Brittanies always have some Little Brittanie inside them which makes them inadequate, too much, damaged, abnormal, and never good enough for this world or other people.
Basically, my kids being sent home from school ripped off another layer of me and revealed that deep inside there is still some self hatred there and in life I am still trying to do enough, to be a good enough mother, to make up for being Brittanie. Because being Brittanie is bad.
So, there are a couple ways we can go from here. In the past when I get this low I am normally taken to the doctor and hospitalized and my doctor bumps up my medications for a while so that some of the extreme pain that I am feeling can be numbed because the pain is so overwhelming that in the past it has made me very ill, caused me to loose my mind and even almost my life. So the safe thing to do is numb it a little while I go through therapy to deal with the root of the pain. But I am not doing that this time.
This is not because of the self hate that I am now aware of or a way of punishing myself or me trying to make myself sick. If I needed the pain to be numbed a bit this time, I would run to my doctor and she would gladly take care of that for me. But the truth is, right now I am stronger than I have ever been. the fact that I can even identify why I feel so horrible is huge growth. Because I am now strong enough thanks to my support system, my God, my spiritual practice, my medication, my self care practices, the Gohonzon, my community care practices, my friends and family, my financial supporters, my therapist, my psychologist, my resilience, prayers myself and others have prayed, and the legacy of strength from my ancestors, I actually can run directly into this pain, heal it, and come out stronger on the other side. Halle-freakin-lujah.
So that’s what I am doing friends. I am going to actually experience this this time. I am going to do the work. No numbing. No “easy buttons” as Glennon Doyle says. I am going to do the work of feeling this pain and coming out of the fire as ashes that rise into Beautiful. I am going to come out changed and even better, even healthier. I trust the process. I trust my life. I trust my God. I trust myself. So, I will probably be depressed for a while. Please feel free to remove yourself from my life if my depression triggers you. I want you healthy! I might not smile everyday, though I hope to! I might not even get out of bed everyday, though I hope to! I don’t promise any level of people pleasing fake positivity or fake positive thinking religious bullshit living. But I promise to tell the truth. The truth heals and liberates. I am into healing and liberation. Fake bullshit living puts people in prisons of pain. I am not into prisons. Lived in them for too long. So here we go, let’s do this healing thing.
Brittanie Richardson 