Picture it.
New Orleans, 1990.
A little chocolate baby is born to a strong-willed, independent woman who just wants a baby and to be great. The waiting room is filled with friends and family, even the baby’s father is present. Despite the rough labor and crap ton of major complications following the birth, mommy and baby eventually return home safe and sound to start this journey called “being a parent and doing your best to make sure you don’t raise a serial killer, drug dealer, or any other type of unsavory character.”
Time moves on. The child’s father is present part of the time until she’s six. Her parents break up. Things get dicey and if this independent woman didn’t consider herself a single mother before, she definitely is post-breakup. Which, you know, is fine. She has a good job and a lot of familial support to help her successfully raise this youngin and that’s just what she did.
The environment the baby girl is raised in is matriarchal (which means women-led, women-ruled) and she turns out to live a fine, happy childhood. When the girl turns 18 she leaves the house to go to college and goes on to live a fruitful, fulfilling adult life. She eventually decides she doesn’t have enough stress in her life and decides to become a PhD and here we have this blog.
The end.
Okay that’s not the end of course but I couldn’t think of a different transition to the actual point of this blog which, if you haven’t gathered from the title, is me talking about being raised by women.
So many people have so much to say about “kids from broken homes,” “illegitimate kids,” and “children raised by single mothers” and a lot of the stuff they say is negative. PARTICULARLY, if the child is being raised by a bunch of women. Folks will believe the child is inherently going to be coddled, super-emotional, have a complex about men, and/or head straight for crime and the streets. Though some of these things persist in single-mother homes they also persist in dual-parent ones as well. If you ain’t know, Donald Trump had a daddy and he’s an actual terrorist soooooo there’s that.
Being raised by women—particularly my mother, my aunt, and my cousin—made me hella feminist. Like, hella. There were no men around that I had to submit to just because he was a man and I carried that attitude outside the house. There was no one I thought was better than me simply because he had a penis. I was taught to ask the right questions, to do things even when you’re afraid of the outcome, and to go for any dream you have in your heart to pursue. I was also taught not to let nobody play me. Meaning that I couldn’t break every time stuff got hard, I shouldn’t back down from my stance or lower my voice simply because a man felt intimidated, and I damn sure better not sacrifice any of my goals for a man.
Those don’t seem like bad lessons to learn. Granted, interacting with men was a challenge for quite some time because I didn’t have the in-house experience of a present father, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t get over quickly enough. As a woman, there are going to be people in your life who feel like you are meant to be seen and not heard. Regardless of your degrees, the fact that you ’bout to be a doctor, or that you have a brain and the ability to think about things other than marriage, some people will not want to hear your voice. They will write you off as silly, uneducated, and, most likely, a bitch and that’s just the way it is. They’re freaking problem.
They’re freaking problem.
Never let others cause you to dim your shine and never let other people’s ideas about where and who you came from dictate how you live your life.
Wishing you great hair and personal fulfillment,
Bri aka “you still in school?” bka the chocolate bunny
“4. A Human Bring is a constructive working scientist who knows, loves, follows, teaches Full Truth, God’s Law, to all of God’s Children, friend & Enemy, otherwise that being is not yet Human! Exceptions? None!”–Dr. Bronner’s Moral ABC
B.Alexandra's Cosmos 