Many women misunderstood the intention of my article, “How We Kill Our Sons Long Before They Die in the Streets.” Some women dismissed it as a personal guilt trip, others saw it as another finger pointing all the blame on black women. But my main concern is for those feeling that their suffering, as daughters, was completely overlooked, disregarded, and needs an apology too.

I understand because I am that daughter who never got an apology from the mother who neglected me nor the father who abandoned me. I am that Sistah who grew up getting beat up and knocked down every time I stood up. I am that black woman who gets blamed for everything missing, broken, and wrong with the neighborhood. I am that mother who did it wrong before I got it right.

Our precious daughters need an apology not just from abusive mothers, absent fathers, and dirty old uncles; she deserves one from this country that shames her for needing help, blames her for being unprotected, and denies her rights as a valuable human being.

I once needed an apology too. But, I had to accept that no one will ever apologize to me for all the horrible things I experienced. But still, I felt if I were ever to heal, my SOUL needed an apology.

It didn’t need an apology from my mother sending me to school without combing my hair, nor from the classmates who tormented me for having that nappy head. It didn’t need one for getting punched and kicked in the back after school for getting good grades in class, nor from the teachers who drove by letting it happen. It didn’t need an apology for leaving the fight in the street because I was dared not to bring it home, nor from the sistahs who jumped me and left me for dead.

What my soul needed was an apology from God for allowing all these things to happen to me in spite of my desire to love and praise him. But I realized that if he wouldn’t save his own son from being beaten, tortured and nailed to a cross for loving and praising him, there won’t be any apologies from him either. So my need for an apology ended with some questions for my sanity: How can we ever save our sons from dying in the streets while worshiping a God who wouldn’t save his? And, How do we justify that son dying to save us while we are still being killed unjustly?

What I received instead, was the Wisdom, Courage, and Strength to walk away from what is not right and take responsibility for what is wrong. I was healed by coming to terms with the Divine Principle of an evident, immutable law — that I must give a breath to get one back and give to others, that which I desire for myself (such as an apology). So, in that article, I gave a breath by acknowledging my offenses and released them out to the universe to get a breath back— not for pity, but for the power of accountability.

Though we are not the architects of our decline, we are the perpetrators of our demise by the conscience-less destruction of our true wealth which are our children. Paper with numbers on it is NOT wealth, our ability to reproduce generations of children with strong bodies and confident minds is the true wealth of a society. Our creator built the laboratory of life in the woman, so regardless of what society will have you believe, it is our (black women) responsibility to rebuild greatness in our future and nurture our wealth with immeasurable love. Therefore it is imperative that we whisper our dreams into the ears of our children rather than scream our curses in their faces.

About blaming All Black Women

I wasn’t blaming anybody, just acknowledging behaviors of mine which were detrimental to the well-being of my children. I don’t know what it is that makes some of us think that every time a black woman speaks or writes, she has to be speaking or writing about ‘all’ black women. I was speaking as that daughter, for myself.

In doing so, I was verbally attacked by some women who sounded like the same kind of nasty sistahs from my past, who once ripped my clothes off me in public because I attended modeling school, who pulled out my hair because they didn’t like the way I looked, and who crept in my bed with my husband whenever I wasn’t home. They sounded like the same kind of nasty sistahs who would never support my business, would boycott all my efforts to make our community better, and who later stole what little I had left when I landed in the homeless shelter. Those same nasty sistahs are the ones who jump to the front of the line whenever praises are due to the conscience, striving Black woman.

I can only feel sorrow for that kind of sistah because I know how terribly she must have suffered to be so vicious towards me. Yet, I have to say to her that her behavior is more destructive to us as a people than all the racists combined and until she lets go of that mean spirit and nasty attitude towards her man, her fellow sistahs, and especially her offspring; the racists of this nation will continue to reign supreme over us because there is an immutable law of attraction in operation — which is the primary reason we keep reliving abuse from society equivalent to the abuse we generate in our actions, our homes, and our children especially.

By no means do I attempt to speak for all black women. Actually, not only do I admire many loving black mothers that uphold supreme examples of Divine woman, I often envy them for their beauty, poise, and limitless ability to make life better for their families and communities. They are my mentors, my heroes, and who I strive to be.

Telling my personal story was in hopes to help these mothers realize the damage they are doing and encourage them to change their behavior as I did over 35 years ago. I’ve lived to see the effects of what I did back then, which is nowhere near as vicious and detrimental as the behaviors I am witnessing firsthand and that are being exposed on the internet today.

As for my mother, I forgave her a long time ago because she was an orphan with a childhood much worse than mine. I attribute to her, the best of who I am today and one thing she told me that I’ll always adhere to is, “If you find yourself saying, somebody oughta, maybe YOU oughta be that Somebody!” To the best of her knowledge she lived it, now I live it too because somebody had to say something about this horrendous thing too many mothers do.