It's hard to take your remaining sane parent out of the "sainthood" box. It's hard to realize that you can love your mother, respect her for making a hard and scary choice, and admire her for EVENTUALLY making a good choice for herself and for you, and still realize she screwed up for a long period of time
**if she stayed with someone
who was betraying her for a period of 10 to 15 years** UNLESS
she had no other financial choice
or she was afraid he'd kill her.
If leaving a betrayer "only" seemed
like an impossible emotional choice for 15 years,
then a mother screwed up.
And we can say a mother who cannot choose
self-worth and self-respect messed up bad
because she also likely
f***ed her daughters and sons up too. .
One woman can do great phenomenal things and heinously stupid things all in one lifetime and that includes our mothers.
Some of the scar tissue she helped lay on you between 0 and 18 will last until you're 80 or death.
It'll be a son or daughters responsibility to start recovering from those wounds once that person hits 18 in our society But any mother worth her salt will FEEL responsible for her children's adult scar tissue.
At least that's how the mother-friends in my life roll.
But when one refuses to see the good, the bad, and the ugly, in our mothers when they are the one victimized, how do we refuse to move forward into the same victimization?
If mother cheated on
is heroic in her insta-forgiveness,
sans anything but wishing,
aren't we
the girl children
forced to assume that mother stayed
because
"boys will be boys" is legitimate,
the insta-forgiveness is real,
a black woman's lot in life is
to be long suffering.
I don't want that to be the final message of "Lemonade" when there are so many rare and beautiful images and words reflecting off the skin of black women. But what else can the message of Lemonade be when forgiveness is offered on nothing more than a woman's wishing. Again, the man is not fully there, is not speaking, is not anything except an object.
In the 21st century we want control so we want everything to be about "me" and "what I do" as if others cannot damage us. But it's not true.
When forgiveness is forced to be linear because the forgiver finds that the offender doesn't want to be forgiven or stop their behavior, that is a painful thing that breaks relationship ...
AS
IT
SHOULD
Forgiveness is about restoring relationship. So it is a sad thing when the other doesn't want to be forgiven.
Said a different way,
forgiveness cannot be
all about the forgiver
unless
the forgiven one
is going away,
is leaving the relationship.
Linear forgiveness involves, at least temporarily, giving up on relationship with the forgiven one because forgiven one
-doesn't want to make amends,
-doesn't want to ensure betrayal won't happen again,
-doesn't want to be forgiven,
-and doesn't care if the forgiver
feels safe and worthy of respect.
The circle of forgiveness
requires two people.
Therefore a video that' REALLY supposed to be about love and forgiveness cannot be independent of the desires of the one being forgiven.
This means, as beautiful as Lemonade was-- up until the end-- I need a freaking sequel that shows something other than pretzeling of black female self and wishing on a beautiful picture of family.
My mother did that her whole life.
She took mental snap shots of intermittent wholesome family behavior-- even when those scenes were months or years apart-- and used them to tell herself our family was "good." She took mental photos then mentally held them up in front of reality, blocking reality out, whenever things got ugly-- and they got ugly a lot. And she refused take any mental photos of the ugly days -- which means she doesn't remember sh**.
Years ago, I had a woman friend (quasi-rich and white) tell me that she was staying with a physically abusive husband because her daughter needs a father-- like she didn't have.
I tried to tell her a hundred different ways, without banging over the head, without being as direct as I would be now -- "Are you going to be surprised when she marries a man like Daddy? Are you going to be surprised when he hurts her while she's pregnant, hurts her bad enough to make her bleed during her pregnancy just like Daddy did to you?"
I've heard "But I love him..." from 20 something year old women so many times, I've lost count. And I've heard it from women of all shades no matter how the jack@$$ in question was abusing and/or betraying them.
But today's black women are a little smarter.
Many put young black girls down. But young black feminists and other young black women --who don't realize how strong their feminist leanings are-- reach the age of 16, 17, and 18 and realize they want family, they want a baby but not the jerk that comes with the baby.
They see what is acceptable under the ruse that is "boys will be boys" and they want no part of it.
Young black girls are realizing they want to create family but have no intention of going through the crap Beyonce has gone through. They have no intention of minimizing "betrayals" into small mistakes that ONLY A MAN can make over and over again.
A lot of young black women are looking sisters. female cousins, mothers and aunts who write dissertations and shoot entire video albums on how to be forgiving
***while observing that***
men write damn near nothing about how to be forgiven
"sex = yes,"
"baby = yes"
"permanent relationship with the man = unlikely"
....so why get married and then
have to pay a divorce attorney to be rid of him.
A lot of young black women are starting to think that men who believe that "infidelity" is not as big as "ultimate betrayal" are not worth marrying.
And these young black women are right for the most part.
More tomorrow
<--- a="" black="" br="" for="" hard="" imagination="" in="" is="" light="" maybe="" me="" my="" nbsp="" of="" shake="" stereotype="" strong="" that="" to="" woman="">
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