What I’ll Tell My Little Black Girls About 2020
The truth will set us free — it will also help us heal
There are two types of parents: carpenters and gardeners.
Carpenters believe they can build the kind of structure for their children that will dictate a successful outcome. But gardeners create the space to allow their children to thrive.
I liken myself to a gardener. Both of my daughters were born during revolutions. I don’t know if that makes me dumb or them martyrs. What kind of parent does that make me?
My little girls — my little Black girls — will have questions about what was happening in the time when they were children. They will remember some of what transpired and forget the rest. Like all of us, children remember the details that matter most to them. But their memories are better than ours. Our memories are tainted with bias, projections, and judgment; theirs glitter with hope and promise.
I know that the world was burning when they came out of their mothers’ wombs. For my five-year-old, it was the fires of Ferguson. For my one-year-old, it was the fiery heat of a pandemic and a whole country rotting away with racism.
No one told me how hard it would be to hold my child when the other half of me…
