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Loving My Blackness Is Like the Five Stages of Death
It’s the harsh realities that awaken us
Note: In college, I learned about Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s model on the 5 stages of death, and thanks to a conversation with my young niece, she said learning about our history is like going through the 5 stages of death. The five stages of death in order is: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance.
Why would I say that something as precious as loving oneself is akin to death?
I promise you, I’m not morbid or have low self-esteem. Yet when I look back at how I never embraced my African American-ness as a child and teenI find that it was hard to reconcile ugly truths with rosre colored glasses on, I can’t help but see that loving my blackness is like finally, and painfully, letting go of the cognitive dissonance.
It hurts.
Do you think I wanted to sit in high school class learning about my ancestors doing nothing but being whipped, tortured and picking cotton? Sitting there in class I only smiled grinned from ear to ear when we talked of Egypt and how everything seemed Golden, and the Sphinx held a riddle in its mouth.
My teacher never said we built the pyramids, but in my mind and heart I could feel it in my blood.
