6 year old while taking her morning bath)
6 yo: there’s not a lot of brown people at school.
Me: (taken aback)
6 yo: There’s only two or three
Me: (Actually it’s more like 10, I’ve started counting) Do you want to go to school with more brown people?
6 yo: I think so.
Me: Mommy and daddy will make sure we do a better job of making sure you go to a school with lots different kinds of kids. (I really didn’t know how else say ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity)
6 yo: okay, thank you.
Loving yourself is an act of rebellion.
Your children, outside of you, yet an extension of you can teach you a universe of truths. Take my daughter for example, she’s felt the weight of being different and yearned for a community of peers to disappear into. She’s anxious about standing out, about being different, even if the difference is as marvelous as melanin and as awe-inspiring as well defined hair texture. In her anxiety and in her doubt, I saw my own struggles to come into my own and be comfortable with myself.
On a Saturday not so long ago, I had brunch with a group of mothers. We talked a little of everything: career, childhood, Southern California cost of living, love, and marriage. Though our narratives were different – raising multiracial children, raising a Mexican American daughter, and raising a black girl who’ll (hopefully one day) own her magic – many of our worries overlapped: how do we raise brave, bright girls who won’t doubt their immeasurable worth.
Being black, brown, and/or Hispanic looks, sounds, and feels different depending on where you grew up, who raised you, and the perception of your local peers. But we, as guardians, are tasked with helping our daughters survive and thrive during the at times arduous journey from girl to woman. To better prepare my daughter for this journey, there are four core things that I regularly emphasize to support my daughter’s journey:
1. Keeping cool and guarding your words. I see things in my daughter that, at times, worry me greatly. Negative emotions or responses that I immediately recognize as potential obstacles to her growth. Instead of obsessing over these things and nagging her about it (which my mother would have done), I speak encouraging words into her struggles and nurture her strengths.
2. Uniquely defining beauty and success. The world will set a set a standard of beauty that most women feel inferior to. Success can be so rigidly defined that creativity and risk-taking can be discouraged. So every day I try to praise the achievements unique to her. Love and nurture the internal and external beauty natural to her, from her kindness to her kinky curly hair.
3. Disrespect is unacceptable. No matter if it’s her peers or authority figures, abuse and degradation of any kind is not acceptable. I make it clear that she can and encourage her right to set limits. Something that is especially difficult and important in a world where black and brown bodies and lives are often devalued.
4. To be authentic. I make I make it clear that she should not make herself smaller and something other than who she naturally is to fit in or find acceptance.
Raising a girl able and willing to find and nurture her own strength is an intentional act. Everyday I must rage again my own insecurities and some of the flaws in my own upbringing. But I do so because I want to teach her that the first battle that must be won and is to love herself and not apologize for that.
What did you say?