Women Making History

If you haven't noticed, you're standing in a pool of feminism here.  I'm always searching for something to empower and inspire our young queens and it seems I have struck gold.  


Ava DuVernay has become the first black director to ever win "Best Director" at the Sundance Film Festival. It's 2013 and the black race is still kicking down doors, moving mountains and peeling the sky back to find a new ceiling.  And Black women?  Burdened with two identities of inferiority, we are striving.  We are working.  We are present in a different capacity than our mothers and sisters before us, but we're here.  The soft spot I have for women is not really soft at all.  It is a solid reassurance that there is still work to be done.  There are still souls to save and tears to wipe away.  


This short film starring Gabrielle Union,  Alfre Woodard, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Adepero Oduye and Goapele is a direct representation of female friendship.  It is the evidence of evolution of a woman experiencing a breakup, the distress, the healing and unconditional love by her friends.  Sometimes splitting up with a man is really splitting up your soul into dividends you can't even piece together in peace.   God, it hurts sometimes.  And sometimes it hurts all the time.  

Your friends, your sisters, the angels God sent to watch over you - it is their golden duty to bring you back to life.  What an honor to be blessed by them.  This film, The Door, shows me how nurturing our hands are, how sometimes her heart has to beat for the both of you.  And we will resist, we will fight because we are hurting inside but she does not retreat.  She is not afraid of your ugly.  She will not surrender you to a devil that doesn't love you anymore.  She is your friend, your sister, your queen.  And as much as we share ourselves with the men in our lives, we belong to a feminine circle, a pool of womanhood. We belong to an honor society in which we have to repair one another.  We must feed each other, clothe each other, and drag sunshine into each other's windows.


I remember when this was me.  I remember not wanting to eat, my hair falling out when him and I fell out.  I mean, I was a wreck over and over again.  The sun couldn't even melt the frozen tears on my eyelids.  It was my sisters who brought me back, who resurrected me, who beat my chest in until my heart mimicked life again.  They pulled him out of me like a tape worm sucking the nutrients I tried to ingest.  My sisters brought me back and I'm  so unapologetically thrilled that this film was made for us and by us.  


I share with you the display of our kind womanhood.  Enjoy and then share.  

P.S.  The fashion is nothing short of amazing.  Below the two videos are some stills I captured attached to the poem I heard in my head.

Sometimes I lay still, hoping if I'm still enough, the rest of the world won't notice that I'm even here anymore

And then she comes over with her attitude and her healing  

Her resilience  

I wish I could be as strong as she is

But I'm not

I'm nowhere close

It hurts to even stand up

She invites the sunshine in

The darkness is still here though

In the corners, in the crevices of my couch

In the creases of my skin

When she touches the ice that is my flesh, her warmth almost makes me cringe

Her pulse is the only music I've heard in days and my ears are just not used to the sound of life anymore

Let me sit here for a moment longer

My bed has become a casket

The most comfortable part of death is the linen

She wants me to put clothes on

Doesn't matter what I wear

They will see the scars

They will see what he did to me

They will see me

I will see me 

And I'm sure I won't like what I see

As she slides the plate closer to me, I'm reminded of the dinners he made

The way he diced the tomatoes and washed the lettuce

This plate is just a memory of all the pain I've digested

Too full of absolutely nothing to try

I am defeated by our failure

Skeptical toward my own healing

Back in my robe and back into the confines where broken hearts hide away

I'm not ready to dance Marie, there's no music here

There's no melody 

The silence is deafening and I just want to sleep until a tune is beautiful and honest enough to wake me

She holds my hands and pulls my body into motion

I move my hips to her happiness

I borrow her joy,  I borrow the brown of her hands

I borrow her glow

And a smile creeps out of me

From a little tiny place within me, the smile comes out to play

And I sway to the curve of that smile until I'm too tired to remember I'm in pain

But here Evelyn comes knocking with two tickets to an emotional paradise

I can't enjoy anything, it hurts too much

I just tried walking and dancing, my limbs are still on fire

Leave me here

I guess I have no say in your attempts to heal me

The dress looks nice

In awe of her silhouette

She is so put together

You can't see her stitches

You can't see her scars

I know she has them, I have them

They are there

I am not making them up

Am I just a bag of bones?

Is my silhouette anywhere near as beautiful as it once was?

She sings

And heaven crawls out of her voice

Her happiness makes me remember mine

With my short white veil, my open arms and a band to promise to love till death do us part

Indeed

Death has parted us

It is real

And she kisses my sadness away

I kiss her back in gratitude

And finally return home

To arms that have sometimes been too critical but always open 

Please Mom, just help me

Just tell me it will be okay like you did when I had a stomachache in the first grade

She watches me arrive, her scent for me still strong

She can smell my weakness

She can smell her blood in my veins

Clasped in her wings, it is safe here

It is warm here, her eyes beaming at my experience

Her heart thrilled that she can be here to receive me

Like the day she first held me, she gazes at me as if it were that day again

Two things are true, I am her baby and tea cures everything

I inhale the steam and I am amazed that a tiny cup can warm my entire body

Hold me Mom

Again, I am amazed

How two arms can heal my entire body.