Mama Bear

by Shirley Smith

  I was kind when I spoke to him. I didn’t want to scare him away. “Do you want to come over and meet me and your granddaughter?” I told him she was a year old. He agreed and came to my apartment on Goldsmith.

  He took one look at me and was like, “Yeah, you mine, you mine.” I was looking in the face of the male version of myself.

  I didn’t let myself have emotions while I heard everything he had to say. Turns out he lived right around the corner from the apartment where I used to hold it down while my mother was on crack binges. Which was not far from my apartment on Goldsmith. So most of my childhood and my young adulthood, this man was in my neighborhood. We probably walked past his house a million times.

  He said, “Oh, this is my grandbaby.”

  And my emotions started to leak out. I said, “That’s not your granddaughter. You don’t even know her. You don’t even know me. I just want to know like what’s up?”

  He told me he was messing with my mother on the side during his marriage. I had an older brother by him and his wife. But not too many years earlier, my older brother got killed when he was twenty-one. He gave me his son’s obituary. I was thinking, So I am my father’s only living child.

  He gave me his number and we talked, met up a few times, and he said, “I’m going to have a relationship with you. You are my child,” but then I would call him, and he stopped picking up. No answer, no answer. One day I called him from somebody else’s number, and he picked up. I was like, “Hey,” and he told me I can’t call his phone. He told me that he was now very involved in the church and the child from an extramarital affair would make life messy.

  He disappeared off the face of the earth.

  My mind was just blown. At first, I was thinking my aunt was right. I didn’t need more heartache. Why did I go digging? For the life of me, I can’t understand why he didn’t even want a fucking relationship with me. I was confused. Breh, you don’t need me? You don’t want a piece of who you are?

  Strange how the tables turn, and turn, and repeat if we aren’t mindful of where we have already been in life and where we don’t need to keep going.

  I was walking around thinking I didn’t matter, and it led me into the wrong arms. I was caught between the push and pull of self-worth and feeling unworthy.

  After JR told me not to come home to Colorado, I found myself waiting to see if he was going to turn around and change his mind. After a while, friends started saying, “Shirley get back out there,” so I did. I began seeing this one dude and fell right into a live-in relationship. It was abusive, one of those situations where you are in it, and have tangled the rhythm of your everyday life in it, so it is hard to see your way out.

  I remember one Sunday morning, that summer of 2015, being on my knees beside the bathtub begging God that if he gave me an out and removed me from that toxic relationship I would not look back. I feel like and know in my heart that’s why what happened a couple of weeks later happened. It was my desperate prayer to God.

  On a Saturday afternoon in July, I was hosting a fish fry at the joint home I shared with my boyfriend. While I was doing my thing of entertaining guests, my cell phone just kept ringing and ringing with calls from JR. I figured he was wanting to talk to Demi. She was six years old and I had done my part well of making sure that there was open communication with her and her father. I would drop her at his parents’ house for him to meet up with her there. You know, open lines of communication regardless of the situation between me and him. But something must have been wrong for him to be blowing up my phone.

  I finally answered, “Hey, hold on,” and I hollered, “Demi, your dad is on the phone.” I gave her the phone and left them to their father-and-daughter time and went back to frying fish and hanging with family and my boyfriend. After a while Demi called out, “Mom, my dad wants to talk to you.”

  I ignored that request, because if he needed to do a switch-up with the visit schedule, there were mechanisms in place for that, and the way we kept things cool was to stay out of one-on-one conversations about schedules and meeting places for drop-off and pickup.

  Then my phone rang again, and this time it was my brother. “Hey sis JR came by here asking me and Bo if he could have your hand in marriage.”

  “What? You kiddin me. What in the hell?”

  I didn’t know if I was flattered, pissed off or what, but I was in shock. I knew one thing, though. It made me nervous as hell to be at the house with my boyfriend and shit like that going down in the background. My boyfriend was the type to get angry with me if he even felt like shit wasn’t right. I spent the rest of the fish fry trying to act as normal as possible.

  My brothers just wanted what I wanted. They wanted to see me happy and they both knew JR had my heart, hell even my boyfriend knew. That cloud over our heads caused a lot of friction between us because anybody could see in my eyes that I truly wasn’t ready to move on but I just did anyway.

  When the company left that night, I hid in the bathroom to text my cousin Danica about the confusion of JR’s request. I accidentally sent the text to my boyfriend, who was on the sofa watching TV.

  I was like, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I locked the bathroom door and didn’t want to come out. I turned on the shower to pretend like I was busy in the bathroom. He was in the living room going for it, cussing, “What the fuck is this shit? What the fuck you take me for?” I was scared out of my mind and kept listening to his footsteps knowing that if he left the living room, he was coming to confront me. He loved Demi, so I knew he would never do her any harm. I cut the shower water off because I heard him coming up the steps. I braced myself.

  I started praying, “God help me find the right path.” And he continued to pace around until eventually he wore himself out and fell asleep.

  He went on the next day barely bringing it up. I played up the good girlfriend to keep his mind off of it. I got his phone and started deleting shit. In the meantime, when he was at work or I was on my way to work, I started hearing JR out about all his life transitions and how he wanted to give it another try if I was willing. He asked me one afternoon if I would pick him up from the airport. I had to do all kinds of sneaky business to pull it off. My story was, I was going to go have lunch with my cousin.

  Demi was with Kawana, my best friend and her godmother, and I remember I was nervous like I was being watched. When I saw JR, something happened different from the other times of us half-looking at each other to exchange Demi. I could see in his face all the shifts he had talked about. We hugged and our connection was back, that friendship we had shared for eight years, that connection over our losses and how we had seen each other through those losses.

  It sounds crazy y’all, but we went that afternoon to the courthouse to apply for a marriage certificate. We later picked Demi up from Kawana, and me and Demi never returned to the house I had shared with my boyfriend, a place that was once my home.

  I was still moving through my daddy-abandonment, though. I thought I could fix the brokenness within the boyfriend and make him into good material. When that didn’t work, I hoped things could work out with JR. I knew I didn’t want my daughter to be fatherless. I also knew I didn’t have a structure or mold of what a father is supposed to be like for a daughter.

  Four years ago, right after JR and I got married, this man Gary reached out to me out of the blue. I asked JR to support me in meeting up with him again. When I saw him, I just flat-out asked, “What the hell happened?”

  He turned back to his story about his life in the church. He didn’t take any responsibility for his own actions.

  I told him, “You’re supposed to be a Christian and you can’t even handle my existence? I want a relationship with my father that’s all.”

  He just blamed it on the church.

  So I settled. “You know what. It’s cool,” I told this man. “The ball is in your court.” And he ain’t picked that shit up, dribbled it, shot it in the hoop. He ain’t done nothin.

 
JR was very supportive at this meeting. Afterward he just said, “Yo, babe, that’s crazy.” JR had also met Erics, the man I thought was my father who doesn’t look anything like me. But when he met this man Gary, he said, “That shit is crazy. You look exactly like him.”

  I walked away from that situation of looking for my father all those years ago, saying to myself that I don’t know how, but I don’t plan to be part of this daddy drama repeating itself. At the end of the day, I was sad and disheartened, but proud of the effort I had made. I still had some question marks that are hard to walk around. But I have fewer of them now. Out of one hundred questions, now I only have twenty. I know what he looks like and how that is reflected in what I look like. I can now tell my children true, even if not flattering, stories about their real grandfather.

  I am proud of myself that out of my thirty-six years of living, I sought the truth of my father in my twenty-fifth year. I did that, and I’m proud of that. Yes, in the beginning it hurt, but I took the necessary steps to have the truth in my life and that is healing for my mind and my body, and I will be able to offer my daughters that healed space in their family.

  JR and I had found our way back to each other, and him back into the regular everyday life of Demi. I told myself, Whatever I can do. I will do. I was going to put the same effort I used to find my father into keeping my daughter’s father in her life. With my efforts, I wanted to fill in a blank for me and for my daughter.

  Today, as the mother of children whose father has an occupation where he has to be absent, it is very important for me to let them know that daddy is working. I don’t want to repeat for them the lack of information that occurred in my childhood. I have been diligent in creating for my children a structure of fatherhood even if he is absent for work or absent because we might have something going on between us. I put that effort in and set the expectations for my actions so that my children have a daddy connection.

  Dropping Jewels

  Create Your Own Mold of a Good Father

  A lot of us Black women grow up without fathers on the scene, which means we tend to work harder to keep our romantic relationships intact. We try to keep quiet and not voice our truths as a way to keep our partners, but we are really pushing ourselves down.

  We don’t want to live through the abandonment again. Who would? But our strategies don’t serve us. We end up with our mold for a “good man” being based on an absent man. We try to seek relationships that fill in the broken mold rather than just scrapping the broken mold and building a sturdy, healthy one.

  Imagine that you are walking around with a space in your head that is empty except for a question mark, and the feeling that without filling in that puzzle piece you will never be whole. Whatever the truth is, a man sitting in an easy chair or a man’s name on a grave marker, you have to know it for yourself. You have to go find out for yourself in order to accept it. You will be able to say you saw it with your own eyes or heard the truth with your own ears. You can be proud of yourself for making the effort, for trying regardless of the outcome.

  In therapy I came face-to-face with my daddy issues, how they impacted how I was feeling about myself and how I was looking for love. I wanted so much to be loved and accepted that I took on projects of love and fixed them up thinking that if I did, that person would love and appreciate me and never leave me.

  I am saying to the women reading this book, that if the structure or the foundation isn’t there the way you’d like it to be, you can still stop the generational curse, by helping your children have a daddy foundation if their father has to be absent. True that he has to deal with his relationship with his children, but don’t be the parent who is telling the children what she thinks of their father.

  Of course if contact is dangerous, that’s a different story, but in the daily course of being separated for nonabusive reasons from their father, keep in mind that your children will feel loyal to you as their mother, and if you are mad at him, they will be mad at him. If you don’t want anything to do with him, they won’t want anything to do with him. Try separating your relationship with him from their relationship with him. Act in a way that helps him stay in contact with his children, even if you don’t want a relationship with him.

  So I work to keep my children’s father in their life so that they have a foundation and mold for “father” and for male relationships, to the best of my ability. Here is some advice based on my own efforts.

  On finding your paternal link:

  Put some posture in your back and know that whatever the truth is about your paternal link, it is not your fault. It’s what you were born into or thrown into. But you don’t have to walk around bitter doing nothing about it. Bitter leads to a lot of other avenues of negativity in your life.

  If you want to know, try to find out. Seek. Put the effort in. Regardless of the outcome. You will fill in the space in your head and heart that is a question mark. You will likely hurt over whatever you find out. But filling in that paternal puzzle piece or putting in the effort to try to the best of your ability will fulfill that empty space. This way you don’t turn to needing the men of your romantic relationships to fulfill your daddy relationship. You still might end up with question marks, but you will at least know some truths.

  So take the journey and trust the process of seeking answers about the paternity link in your life. Putting in the effort regardless of the outcome is one of the only ways you can calm that part of your brain and be able to take up the reality of filling something in for your children.

  Keep in mind what can happen if you don’t think you matter:

  You have to convince yourself that you matter even if the men around you are reflecting something else. Otherwise you might seek love in an abusive relationship because you are not seeing your full worth.

  Fill in the empty space of “Do I matter?” with the love of your children, with family members, coworkers, church community, who always have positive things to say about you. If you have to, just hear their words about your worth until you begin to believe it yourself.

  Now, on paternity of your own children and the baby-daddy drama we often accidentally pass down:

  When he calls, let the children speak to him whether you and their father are clicking or not. It is for your children, so that they don’t have to feel the father-abandonment you felt.

  When it comes to an absent father, know that you can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. But you can leave an opening, an invitation, and a space for him to connect. For instance, you can let him know that you left a spot on the Christmas tree for the ornaments that he can make with the kids. You can’t force him to take the bait of having a relationship with the kids, but you can leave the space open. Your kids will see that you did your part.

  Just do your part as their mother of making sure they have access to their father if that is safe.

  Lastly, be patient and keep in mind that his absence or reluctance to be with his children may be because of his own generational curses. I had to learn this for myself after I learned so many more things about my own pains.

  Part VI

  A Retreat to Reconnect My Womb to My Body

  You know how I said, “Go to therapy!” I’m also saying go on retreat.

  I learned everything about who I am now in this world and in my relationship with my children and their father by looking back at my daddy issues. But I feel like I broke the chain of abuse and found my self-love and the depth of love for the little girls that are my daughters by going on retreat. It’s how I got down to my core wound with my mother and my feelings of being abandoned by her.

  Retreat is so necessary, whether it’s a half-day retreat, a one-night retreat, or a weeklong retreat if you can afford it. If not, get a relative or your best friend to watch the kids once a week and go to a free yoga class or take a free art class, or something online that you can do just to explore and nurture yourself.

  It is through a retreat that I found a
nd forgave my mother. I found and forgave myself. I found and reconnected with my own existence by taking a few days to let somebody else take care of me.

  16

  Finding Myself and Mom in Red Rock

  When I take time and I look back at the tough moments from my childhood, I am looking from the perspective of a Black mother who has three girls to raise, a husband, and a household to run. I find myself checking to make sure each day that I have done everything right, and sometimes I have good days and some days I break down. When I feel that type of imbalance, I always try to go back to the core to see where that imbalance comes from. I feel like the tough moments in my childhood are the moments that shaped me into the woman I am today. The stress of being left alone to take care of my little brother, seeing my mom addicted to crack cocaine and not being the best version of herself. When I am with my three daughters and I consider my own childhood, I feel like my mother not only cheated her children, she cheated herself.

  There is the person I know she was, very alive, very funny, such a comedian, but because of the stress in her life, she turned to drugs, and once she was addicted, she wasn’t able to come into her whole self. I know the ways that all that life stress can grip you and hold you. I know how it was and still is inside my body, throwing things off balance and making it hard to find peace of mind in the midst of chaotic daily life.

  One thing is for sure. We can’t see our way to the healing by being inside the daily stress and chaos. It is imperative, and it is life-or-death, that you get away by design. This is when I learned that I had core wounds, that I was broken, that in order to be better I had to begin again.

  You can’t start over, but you have to begin again. If you really want a better life, to be hopeful, a better mother, a better wife, it starts with you. You have to let the old stuff die off and begin again. Go on a retreat, or to the top of a mountain. Get in touch with what is going on internally.