Love the idea that you don't have to like those you love. Makes the chaos of emotion easier to process. I am enjoying your essays. Personal, astute and timely. Thanks. : )
I enjoy you inviting us to rattle around inside your head as these thoughts swirl. Insightful.
I have much benefited from your own writing and that of others you’ve referenced about growing up and walking through life with black skin, some of which you share again here. Hard to put it into words, but most impactful has been coming to an understanding of the seemingly exhausting pervasiveness of constantly experiencing and dealing with or being ready to deal with others’ negativity, real or perceived. I can imagine that may seem a simple, obvious, “duh!” sort of thing to you, and it is in an intellectual sense. But for one able to walk through life without a second thought of any such constant context in the background, it's the emotional impact of considering how that feels that has so struck me. I thank you for that.
Your post put me in mind of a small bit of my own story. My second-grade teacher in our four-room country school once acquainted us with the concept of economic class and asked which we thought best described our families. I came home and told my mom that I had answered upper middle-class since I thought we had pretty much all we needed. She smiled and said she too thought we had what we needed, but wanted me to know that our family would probably be regarded poor or lower middle-class. I was truly surprised.
Love the idea that you don't have to like those you love. Makes the chaos of emotion easier to process. I am enjoying your essays. Personal, astute and timely. Thanks. : )
I enjoy you inviting us to rattle around inside your head as these thoughts swirl. Insightful.
I have much benefited from your own writing and that of others you’ve referenced about growing up and walking through life with black skin, some of which you share again here. Hard to put it into words, but most impactful has been coming to an understanding of the seemingly exhausting pervasiveness of constantly experiencing and dealing with or being ready to deal with others’ negativity, real or perceived. I can imagine that may seem a simple, obvious, “duh!” sort of thing to you, and it is in an intellectual sense. But for one able to walk through life without a second thought of any such constant context in the background, it's the emotional impact of considering how that feels that has so struck me. I thank you for that.
Your post put me in mind of a small bit of my own story. My second-grade teacher in our four-room country school once acquainted us with the concept of economic class and asked which we thought best described our families. I came home and told my mom that I had answered upper middle-class since I thought we had pretty much all we needed. She smiled and said she too thought we had what we needed, but wanted me to know that our family would probably be regarded poor or lower middle-class. I was truly surprised.