By Monica Stewart

DEATH OF THE STRONG BLACK WOMAN

Sisters... take heed...
Brothers... be strong enough to recognize the seriousness of your sisters' struggle...


On August 15, 1999, at 11:55 p.m., while struggling with the reality of
being a human instead of a myth, the strong black woman passed away,
Without the slightest bit of hoopla. Medical sources say that she died of
natural causes, but those who knew & used her know she died from: being
silent when she should have been screaming, milling when she should have
been raging, being sick & not wanting anyone to know because her pain might
inconvenience them. An overdose of other people clinging on to her when she
didn't even have energy for herself.

She died from loving men who didn't love themselves and could only offer
her a crippled reflection. She died from raising children alone & being for
not doing a complete job. She died from the lies her grandmother told her
mother & her mother told her about life, men & racism. She died from being
sexually abused as a child and having to take that truth everywhere she went
every day of her life, exchanging the humiliation for guilt & back again.
She died from being battered by someone who claimed to love her & she allowed
the battering to go on to show she luvvvvvvvvv'd him too.

She died from asphyxiation, coughing up blood from secrets she kept trying
to burn away instead of allowing herself the kind of nervous breakdown she
was entitled to, but only white girls could afford. She died from being
responsible, because she was the last rung on the ladder & there was no one
under her she could dump on.

The strong black woman is dead. She died from the multiple births of children
she never really wanted but was forced to have by the strangling morality
of those around her. She died from being a mother at 15 & a grandmother at 30
and an ancestor at 45. She died from being dragged down and sat upon by
UN-evolved women posing as sisters. She died from pretending the life she
was living was a Kodak moment instead of a 20th century, post-slavery
nightmare!

She died from tolerating Mr. Pitiful, just to have a man around the house.
She died from lack of orgasms because she never learned what made her body
happy & no one took the time to teach her and sometimes, when she found
arms that were tender, she died because they belonged to the same gender.

She died from sacrificing herself for everybody & everything when what she
really wanted to do was be a singer, a dancer, or some magnificent other.
She died from lies of omission because she didn't want to bring the black man
down. She died from race memories of being snatched & snatched & raped &
snatched &sold & snatched & bred & snatched & whipped & snatched &worked to
death.

She die from tributes from her counterparts who should have been matching
her efforts instead of showering her with dead words &empty songs. She died
from myths that would not allow her to show weakness w/out being chastised by
the lazy and hazy. She died from hiding her real feelings until they became
monstrously hard & bitter enough to invade her womb & breasts like angry
tumors.

She died from always lifting something from heavy boxes to refrigerators.
The strong black woman is dead. She died from the punishments received from
being honest about life, racism & men. She died from being called a bitch
for being verbal, a dyke for being assertive & a whore for picking her own
lovers.

She died from never being enough of what men wanted, or being too much for
the men she wanted. She died from being too black & died again for not being
black enuff. She died from castration every time somebody thought of her as
only a woman, or treated her like less than a man.

She died from being misinformed about her mind, her body & the extent of
her royal capabilities. she died from knees pressed too close together
because respect was never part of the foreplay that was being shoved at her.
She died from loneliness in birthing rooms & aloneness in abortion centers.
She died of shock in courtrooms where she sat, alone, watching her children
being legally lynched. She died in bathrooms with her veins busting open with
self-hatred & neglect.

She died in her mind, fighting life, racism, & men, while her body was carted
away & stashed in a human warehouse for the spiritually mutilated. And sometimes
when she refused to die, when she just refused to give in she was killed by
the lethal images of blonde hair, blue eyes & flat butts, rejected
to death by the O.J.'s, the Quincy's, & the Poitiers.

Sometimes, she was stomped to death by racism & sexism, executed by hi-tech
ignorance while she carried the family in her belly, the community on her
head, & the race on her back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The strong silent,
s**t-talking

black woman is dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or is she still alive and
kicking??????????????

I know I am still here.

~ Author Unknown ~

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