Baby Steps

When life decides it is time for you to change your course, it does not fuck around.

Honestly, a year ago, I did not believe I would be here. Unattached. Unstable. Unusually quiet. And still on the inside. But also. Growing. Changing. Morphing into my next stage. And more scared than I would like to believe.

Motherhood did not come to me as I was promised. No loving embrace. No whispered dreams of the making of kings and queens. Instead, she came to me in the dark, under a moonless sky,  with a cold rain marking the night as unremarkable as possible.

I immediately forgot, even as my womb began to remember.

Six babies who never quite made it here. Years of wishing, pleading, hoping, and yes, once, even begging to be allowed to make this journey. Years of being denied, threatened with lovers who would rather walk out, given ultimatums, even having the gift dangled in front of my face, only to have it snatched from me.

That may have hurt the worst. Being told, being made to felt that I was unworthy of motherhood. A hurt I have yet to recover from, as the words came from someone I loved, trusted, and changed my life for.

So now I walk into motherhood alone, but surrounded by women who are holding me up when I am tired, when I feel I cannot go on, when I forget that I am both blessed and loved. I have made family where before I felt isolated. I have found, through them, the strength I was told I always had.

I will be brave for my son - even when I am weary and the world is hard.

If nothing else, I will show him what a gift a strong woman is.

I do not relish the idea of single-handedly growing him from boy to man. I hope to fill his life with amazing role models. I know the world will not be kind to him. Fatherless black boy. Beautiful, talented, loving, kind - those will not be the words all paint him with. They will see him as a threat, no matter how well-mannered, well-spoken, or well-principled he is.

But I give him his name in hopes that it will remind him of his power.

His strength. His place in the world, not just the corner of it where he is born.

My son is not yet born, but I see him clearly as a man I would be honored to shake hands with one day.

I ask that his steps be ordered, and that he recognizes one day that the courage he has to move forward is one gift that will come from me.

Even, and especially, those baby steps.

With love,
L.