Mama Bear

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Mama Bear Page 10

by Shirley Smith


  Sometimes when we can’t call for help, God sends a messenger to call us. I was in the townhouse, sitting on the bed. I had Denver in my arms and I was crying, just crying and crying beyond a thought of even knowing which thing I was crying about, and the phone rang. I saw it was Bishop Glanton, but I didn’t answer while I was crying. Something told me to pick up the phone, tears and snot and all, and call her back. I did, and I told her the truth as best I could.

  “Bishop I don’t know what is happening to me. I had the babies back to back. I feel like I’m spiraling out of control. I don’t even want to be bothered with my children. I don’t know what to do. I’m overwhelmed physically and emotionally, and I’m losing my way.”

  She calmly said, “Shirley, have you ever talked to somebody professional?”

  I was like, “No.”

  She said, “I have a therapist to refer you to. He does marital counseling and individual counseling. So you can take into discretion what you and JR need or what you need individually and give him a call.”

  I was feeling better just talking to her and hearing that there was something I could do about my situation. I said, “Okay Bishop,” and I took the number and hung up.

  I didn’t waste any time, because I couldn’t imagine my situation getting any worse than it already was. I really felt like I needed something to save my life. I picked up the phone and called. The therapist was in New Jersey and he said we could talk over the phone, or I could fly home depending on what I felt my needs were right then. I knew that I was in such a broken place that I needed to sit in front of his face in his office. I got on a plane and flew out to see him.

  That is my therapist to this very day. I had to make myself vulnerable and reach for help and that was the end of the Energizer bunny and the beginning of healing.

  The clouds slowly, slowly started to clear. And God dropped even more things in my path to help me. These opportunities were always there, but I was spinning in the chaos and couldn’t see them.

  In January 2019, my best friend, Kawana, who was also going through it, got in touch with me about a retreat called Sedona Soul in Arizona. A retreat? I did something I had never done but needed to be done a long time ago: I went on a retreat.

  Dropping Jewels

  How to Turn Off the Energizer Bunny and Get Help

  Postpartum depression is the real deal. I felt it all unraveling even though something in me kept saying, You don’t get to fall apart Shirley. Something else was saying, Woman you should have fallen apart years ago.

  Studies have shown that African American women who grew up in poor financial and social circumstances are more likely to experience postpartum depression, but these studies also show that seeking therapeutic support and going to support groups are what can help us realize we are not alone and we are capable of surviving this time of deep depression (Broomfield, 2014).

  As Black women, we are taught to keep everything bottled in and bottled up. We don’t realize the stressors this places on our bodies, on our minds, and on our emotions when we carry around all this trauma from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. A lot of this we put on ourselves because we don’t feel like it’s okay to speak up or that people are listening to us when we say “Ouch” or “I need help!” We get scared that they are going to think we are weak and that they will then do what society does to Black women, take advantage of us.

  Imagine (and most of you won’t have to) growing up without your father, and your mother is absent because she is addicted to a substance. Imagine you have lived through molestation and a host of other things in your life and you have no outlet. It’s like bricks are piling up on your body and they get heavier and heavier when you never even built up a solid foundation.

  Yes, breathe on that word.

  Then on top of that you insist on living a life where you can do everything in order to make everything in your life, and in everybody else’s life, better. We constantly put out and don’t take in anywhere near as much. It’s just not a sustainable reality.

  Trauma is trauma, stress is stress, hurt is hurt—major or minor, race related, or life related. Postpartum depression doesn’t know your race. It doesn’t say, Ah, damn, you already been through a lifetime of shit, then let me skip over you. It’s a biological thing that happens with your hormones, and if you add a lifetime of Energizer bunny bottled-up stress to that, it’s a Molotov cocktail.

  Get help!

  That’s the advice I want to offer you all, even if you are estranged from your family or friends and don’t have that backup. You need people, you need support.

  Do not isolate yourself. When I was in the situation of my postpartum depression, I felt closed in. Even sometimes when you have support, you don’t feel supported because your friends and family want to keep asking you questions that you don’t have the energy to answer. For instance, your family might not know what to do. “Can you tell me what I can do Shirley?” They are trying, but they don’t know that you don’t have the energy to tell them how to help you. If you did, you’d just help yourself. When this happens, don’t isolate. Say, “Just be here,” and guess what? They will be there, will see you losing your shit, and will figure out how to help.

  Seek support groups. These are people who have gone through the same thing. If you can’t find one, make your own by blogging the way I did.

  Go to therapy! This might be most important. Therapy is okay. You need to be heard. You might have been taught to take it all to God, and pray, pray, pray. But we are in real times. I need a real person to act as an extension of God’s communication to me. Check out the Resources section of this book for some links for your mental wellness.

  And it is also okay to put your daughters in therapy. That was foreign to us, but they can benefit from what we now know.

  Read about healing and about your body and its systems and about what you need to be mentally and physically healthy. Most of us live our whole lives with no information except the memories of the trauma and abuse and the recycling of generational curses. You need some new information to be thrown in to disrupt that recycling so that you can make something new for yourself and your kids.

  Part V

  Peeling Back the Layers

  Admitting I was not superwoman, and reaching out for mental wellness help, was the beginning of me falling apart and evaluating my life so I could put it back together as the healthy version of me. It was the beginning of my healing. I’m not saying drop God and pick up therapy. I’m saying your faith practice and your mental health practice go hand in hand.

  God is in communication with me always, but I am here in the flesh and need somebody to sit down in front of me in the flesh and say, “Listen, up is up and down is down.” You know, I need a real-life reality check to offer me guidance to keep me from losing it and to help me to unravel everything that is beyond my solo understanding of things. Someone to help guide me so I don’t explode with this buildup of stress in my Black-woman body, mind, and emotions. After the day I called a therapist, every step I took lit up my new life in front of me and helped me to find more tools for my healing.

  I am saying this to everybody reading this book. You have to go backward to go forward. You have to figure out what the bricks that are piled on your chest are made of. You have to investigate your past to find out what is causing your Energizer bunny behavior, your people-pleasing chaos, your superwoman act, in order to be able to make healthier choices.

  It can be hard to dive into your own stuff to figure yourself out, but being in therapy, reading self-help books, and being in support groups helped me to see the most important thing. The love I was driving myself crazy looking for was within my everyday reach, my children. If I didn’t take the journey into my shit, I would have repeated the cycles.

  My first step was to get vulnerable with myself:

  Who am I? I am a woman who sometimes don’t know who she is. I am a woman who does not know what normal is. I am a woman who has abandonment issu
es, trust issues, a lack of self-worth, and other inequities. I learned life the best way I knew how. I do all that I do from the kindness of my heart. But when it is not good enough it hurts because I am truly giving my best. I am worthy of being taken care of, but I need to take care of me so people can see it.

  Sometimes I don’t know how to take care of me. What does taking care of Shirley look like? I am always afraid that someone will eventually leave me because I am so used to being left.

  It is easier for me to believe in everyone else and not myself; sad but very true. I have issues and I do need help. I often feel worthless, because I measure my worth based on how people treat me versus how I treat myself.

  I have a hard time letting my children loose because I would never want them to feel like, Mommy left me, because that’s what was done to me. I want to truly move beyond my past and heal. Every time I believe I take a positive leap forward, I am knocked back down, by people’s words, triggers, and actions. It’s almost like being told no matter what you do, you’re not good enough. Or, I’m always made to feel like I’m always fucking up. Which causes me to shut down on so many levels.

  I am speaking my truth, because I base my well-being on others being well, and I believe speaking and writing my truth is good for us all.

  12

  Girl Meets Boy

  I know a lot of folks make the connection between looking for a mate and their relationship with their fathers early in life, but I only recently, here in my thirties, showed up to this reality. There was no getting around it. In therapy I had to face my daddy issues. I certainly can’t pass on to my daughters a healthy understanding of men and relationships unless I take a hellishly good look at that daddy/boyfriend parallel.

  Newark, New Jersey, Spring 2007

  The spring after my mother passed away, I started down the right track with some self-love. I got a place of my own in Newark. I was proud of myself working at the hair salon and at Branch Brook Park Roller Skating Center. It was about time I had my own place, where I could make things the way I wanted them to be. I was on the second floor of a three-family house on Goldsmith Avenue. I had a living room, and a little room for a bed and a TV for my brother when he started living with me. To the right was the dining area, but I made it into my office. There was a little hallway, then the kitchen, a little bedroom to the left and one to the right. It was the perfect size for me and my oldest brother, Darryl. We had a spot. We were grateful. It was a huge step up for it being my first apartment. I was like, Okay Shirley you got a two-and-a-half bedroom in the Weequahic section of Newark. The apartments were big over there, not little studios or basements. I was moving on up like George and Weezy.

  It was May and nice out. I invited everybody; family by day for just the housewarming part and friends and homies at night to both celebrate and watch the fight that was coming on TV. I had to go food shopping, clean house, couldn’t even get dressed, all day cleaning from ceiling to floor. The place smelled like some serious Mr. Clean and I had the windows open to catch that fresh breeze.

  You know how I do; I love to entertain, so there was a vibe. I was boppin around to music making sure everybody had some Popeyes chicken, some rolls, greens, and was comfortable with drinks in their hands.

  A mutual friend, Jamar, called. “I want to bring my friend JR. Is it cool?” I didn’t think nothing of it, I’m a people person, always love for whoever.

  I said, “No prob at all bro.”

  When JR got there I greeted him like everybody else. He was tall with fair skin and a meek half-smile. He had on a fitted cap, oversize white T-shirt with some baggy jeans, and white Air Force 1 sneakers. I made sure he had a place to sit. He sat down in my kitchen to a plate of Popeyes chicken. I got him a drink, told him, “Make yourself comfortable. Make yourself at home,” and I kept it moving. I was busy making sure everybody had a good time.

  As the day progressed, food transitioned to game snacks. I mixed and mingled, even while everybody was staring at the TV, and passed him and was like, “You okay, you need anything?” He was cool, sitting off to the side, conversating with his homeboy Jamar.

  He stayed a few hours. I didn’t have much of a conversation with him, because I was so busy entertaining. One hundred percent, I don’t remember knowing that he was in the NBA and didn’t care at the time. That was our first encounter.

  Jamar called me a day or so later and asked if JR could have my number. I didn’t really want to release my number to him because I briefly heard at the party that JR was dealing with another friend of mine. Apparently, they were just talking, not in a girlfriend-and-boyfriend thing. Lateef and I had gone our separate ways months earlier, but I was also dating a little bit on and off myself. Mostly, I was working my two jobs and making a good place for me and Darryl, and by then Tokunbo too. Eventually I told Jamar that he could give JR my number. I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in that.

  He called me from time to time and told me his new number whenever he changed numbers even though I barely used the old one. I would be like, “Oh, how you? Great, thanks. Good to hear from you,” and I kept it moving. I was healing from losing my mother, and I was working to find my grown-up life. What I didn’t know was that summer, JR suffered a major loss that would change the course of his life. He ran a red light one night with his best friend in the car, resulting in a major accident. JR walked away from the crash; his best friend died. But that was in the background. When two people come together, there’s a trail of shit a mile long that they both bring. We was both walking around with loss, which I can say now was part of the attraction in ways that we weren’t aware of at the time.

  At the end of the summer, Jamar got married to my childhood friend Quianna. JR and I ended up groomsman and bridesmaid. It was August 2007. Only a little more than a year had passed since my mother died and only two months had passed since the death of his best friend. The wedding was held in Maplewood at Quianna’s aunt and uncle’s house and the reception was in the hot backyard.

  That Usher and R. Kelly song was playing, “Same Girl.” Another guy was dancing with me and JR came sauntering over. The wedding was the first time we’d seen each other since my housewarming party. He and my friend put me in a sandwich and kept dancing. It was all still laughter, and the song was all sexy blaring, “We messing? With the same girl,” but I was like, “Hold up. Get me up out of this like y’all actin like I’m some ho.”

  Then JR and I were dancing one-on-one, and he whispered all head tilted like talkin game, “Are you gonna give me a chance?”

  I told him, “I don’t know. You used to talk to my girl, and I have two jobs, and I’m enjoying my life right now.” And that was that for the moment.

  He kept calling me, though. He asked me several times to come to Denver where he was playing for the Denver Nuggets. Around Thanksgiving, I finally went out there for a weekend and that was all she wrote.

  On the flight, in my head I kept doubting, thinking about the whole NBA thing. I don’t have time for being all in the scene of niggas acting Hollywood. Somewhere in my head I was probably also thinking, Is he just gonna have me go through all this and leave me? I got there and it was nothing like I thought. I got to see who this boy was, contrary to my assumptions. It was magical. For him it was like a shock that I wasn’t hung up on the NBA. I was like, “You are a person like me, just a different occupation.”

  We sat on the couch and shot the breeze: binge-watched Martin and Die Hard movies, ate ice cream. Then like best friends we got out and went bowling. I didn’t feel like I had boundaries, I felt like he was a guy from around the block who I knew all of my life, not all Hollywood. The best thing is that we laughed our asses off. I cooked and cleaned, like the shit was relaxed and domestic right off the bat. He made me feel like it was about me. Things were so comfortable that weekend that the lovemaking came as natural as everything else.

  After that weekend with him we made it official and I got tattooed, on my wrist, his signature alo
ng with our starting date, November 11, 2007. Looking back, I wouldn’t advise my daughter to date a man for a few weeks and get his name tattooed on her body, but hey, that’s where I was at. Rick Ross said it best, “She in love with a G so she tatted my name.”

  Those beginning phases of our lives included a lot of traveling back and forth between Colorado and New Jersey, which is where we both called home. I looked forward to going to Denver, but always looked forward to getting back to my work at the hair salon and the skating rink and working with my brothers to keep up our apartment. It was my life. But I was always trying to see if JR was going to be playing a game in Philly, New York, or New Jersey so we could keep it close to home. It was full and exciting to be in love with him and also with the life I had built for myself.

  I know those weeks of falling in love left a positive mark on our hearts that keeps us fighting for our love today. When there were no kids, no extra bitches, no pride, just us. Those days set the tone of our love.

  A month later, Christmas 2007, I was back home in my apartment on Goldsmith. I was on the phone with my aunt Kathy, the youngest of my mother’s sisters. I was about to go back to JR’s house when she just said something slick: “You know Erics ain’t your real father.” Erics was the man who came and went from the picture. I called him Daddy because I didn’t know any different.

  I was like, “Then who is?”

  She said, “Gary.”

  “Who the hell is Gary?”

  My mom was deceased, and I couldn’t ask questions. I called JR who was in New Jersey at the time, and I told him I was just on the phone and found all this out. I was questioning out loud, “What is this all about?”

 

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