Black Maternal Health Week was earlier this month, a month that the US recognizes as Minority Health Month. I however was too afraid to share my thoughts that week, but here they are now.
Iâve been thinking about Black maternal health since I was in my low 20s⊠my own possible maternal health and that of my Black and Brown friends and loved ones. But Itâs been aâŠcomplicated journey for some time. As an artist, a pansexual-bi-queer, sometimes income insecure & not always smooth sailing in the family department, I was thinking about what it would mean if I had a child. I wonât get into the specifics of my I-can-take-it-or-leave-it situational approach. What I really wanted to break my silence on is that harrowing topic of Black maternal health. Because it has shaped how I think about possibility and how hope can be squeezed and cinched to suffocation.
I am no longer a young 20-something. Iâm not even a young 30-something. I donât wake up wondering if I should bring a child into the world, generally speaking. I think about kids, young people, often though. I work with them, I love them, I connect with them in stores, parks, on trains and buses. I love my friendsâ children and my nieces. I carry fruit snacks, a juice pack and a small toy in my backpack if I know Iâll be with a kid that day, just in case. I think about parents even more often. All kinds, all over history. I decided a LONG time ago it was (probably?) best if I didnât bring any of my own into the world for more sociological reasons than capability reasons. But what I didnât really talk about was how crippled I felt by how many burdens are placed on a Black woman, let alone one planning to give birth. I felt like my fate was sealed. I was silently heartbroken - not that I was possibly too broke, or worried about co-parenting or partnership, or my âfitnessâ to be a parent. I was heartbroken that itâs so fucking difficult for Black women to bring human life into this world, in this country, after all that we already endure and survive. After all the microaggressions and dismissals we already face in the medical office without expecting. Nevermind that your brown or Black child may be killed dead in the street by the people allegedly here to âprotectâ the citizens of this place. Can we just get an appointment where weâre not treated both like weâre superhuman and therefore not capable of being in pain and also subhuman not worthy of professional, comprehensive, humane care?
I hesitated to write this, to share this because of the bleak nature. I wake up every day wondering how many young Black women have sealed their own fate, told themselves, donât even consider it. Stay realistic and stay alive. There are no answers here and there are no wrong ones. I simply share this admission as a love letter to all those women who feel like they canât even dream and ponder free of that oppression, the very real statistics staring them in the face telling us we die more often bringing human life into this crazy world. (There are many ways we bring life, cultivate life, keeping life ALIVE. Sometimes we are killed slowly for those other ways we birth too.)
And for every glorious Black woman who has dared to do it, whose citizen they birthed is braving this world, these birthers of humans who bring me to tears in their audacity and glory, thank you for slaying me over and over. I am the product of such a woman. And the woman before her. And the woman before her.
I may seem like Iâm rambling but thereâs an aggressive attack in this country on the bodies of people like us or who can or dare or hope to reproduce, birth. Of all walks of life. Our self-sovereignty, already poked and prodded, is questioned state after state. The right to decide for OURSELVES. This is not about whether Iâve wanted or not wanted kids. This is about feeling like the choice was never really mine. For so many reasons. For anyone else whoâs felt that way, who has shaped so much of their early adult life around that oppressive looming threat, I see you. We are still here. We are still self-sovereign. Society lies. Oppression is real. Power dynamics are real. Maternal health or the threat therein is real. But we are realer. Hold yourself. Love yourself. Recognize your life. Your life. Your LIFE. And all it has birthed in more ways than one. đ€đ€đ€
