Breaking Apart During COVID-19
“In the healing from that breaking apart and the healing from that trauma, we can choose to either become harsher, angrier, more bitter, closed off, and controlling of other people—or we can take that moment to see that, even while we are breaking apart, we haven’t been broken.”— Mai’a Williams in Parenting for Liberation: A Guide to Raising Black Children
The day California, my home state, issued it’s shelter in place order, I sent an email through Parenting for Liberation, an organization I founded in 2016 rooted in an Afro-futuristic vision of a world where black parents are in community with each other to raise black children without fear and instead parent for liberation, calling for a Blacks parents check in. Using the Erykah Badu meme, “Y’all alright?” created space to connect about how we were feeling. It’s not too often that Black parents are asked about how they are doing; as a Black mama I have struggled to push against the Black Superwoman phenom where I’m supposed to do it all and not need anyone. What I’ve grown to learn from the COVID Community Check in and also over the course of developing Parenting for Liberation is that a true “superwoman” is only as strong as her village, and the inherent power was in the collective.
Fifteen Black parents joined a virtual session a week later, connecting over our fears, worries, frustrations. It was a space where Black parents could take the cape off and be vulnerable with one another. It’s in the sharing of the difficulties and challenges that true healing can be possible. One participant reflected “There’s so much heaviness these days, which is also important to process and CONTINUE READING: Breaking Apart During COVID-19 – Parenting for Liberation