For the Black Mothers Who Mourn on Mother’s Day
Time for self-care is a common gift for mothers this time of year. Perhaps it is time for us as a society to focus on what is needed for the collective healing of the Black mother.
Black mothers were brought to the shores of America four centuries ago to be nothing more than a body that works for others while producing babies who would grow into more bodies to work and be discarded like the scraps of a machine hell-bent on furthering a grotesque dream that never included them. These Black mothers never dreamed of watching their sons, daughters, and husbands being ripped away from them to be sold, imprisoned, lynched, or murdered by a country—one built by these mothers, their children, and their calloused and scarred palms.
On Mother’s Day, we usually applaud Black mothers for all their hard work, endurance, resilience, and strength in the face of violence. We take this time to share photos of the mothers of slain Black men, depicting their power and their pain as their beautiful faces remind us all that this country never meant to include Black people in their loud, prideful proclamations of liberty and justice for all.
This Mother’s Day, rather than viewing these Black mothers as solitary pillars of strength, I want us to view them as women who are mourning—who have long been grieving without reprieve—so we can remember that Black mothers live with the constant fear that their sons, daughters, and husbands will be taken away from them, making them yet another Black mother continuing a never-ending legacy of tears.
The last decade or so has seen a rise in the popularity of epigenetics, which is the biological study of how changes in gene expression that don’t alter the gene itself can be inherited. When you consider the Black experience in America, it’s difficult to fathom how deeply the traumas have been inherited and how they may manifest themselves in our children today and tomorrow. Considering the long-term cultural impact of this trauma on Black Americans is chilling.
Time for self-care is a common gift for mothers this time of year. Perhaps it is time for us as a society to focus on what is needed for the collective healing of the Black mother. They deserve the same opportunity to give freely and wholly of themselves and not be bound by their family’s need for impassable strength and roughness. They must be allowed to pass batons of joy, love, happiness, wholeness, and humanness onto their children.
Black mothers arrived in America shackled and in tears, and they’ve remained in mourning ever since. They haven’t had a chance to wipe their soft midnight cheeks or wash the taste of salt from their lips. Whether they were watching their husbands and children be beaten on plantations, squinting against the searing glow of a burning cross during the Jim Crow era, standing by helplessly as their loved ones fell victim to the targeted drug trade and mass incarceration, or mourning as their children are murdered at the hands of law enforcement, Black mothers have remained indomitable in their unceasing grieving.
Tamir Rice’s mother mourns like Emmett Till’s mother, who mourns like Breonna Taylor’s mother. As we face the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, I’ll never forget how he—as his last few breaths were being squeezed from his body—called out to his mother.
This Mother’s Day, imagine a world that allows Black mothers to hold their children instead of pictures of them, a world where Black mothers play with their grandbabies instead of burying them. Let’s create a world where Black mothers stop mourning and living in fear and start smiling, passing down joy and wholeness to the next generation.