I Didn't Know My Family

I Knew Their Trauma

My Mom, My Grandma, Aunt Mac, Aunt Vicki, Desi & Robin

My mom once told me a story about when she came to pick me up from summer camp. She saw an adorable tiny chocolate drop of a child run towards her with outstretched arms. She had no clue who it was. Eventually she realized that it was me - her own damn child with an extra beautiful rich, dark tan that she had never seen on me before. 

I am in love with every shade of my Blackness. 

But that’s not why I’m here. 

Speaking of my mother, to start - ma’am, how are you not here? Where in the fresh hell are you? How have I survived two decades without you? 

We shared 25 years of life and yet, I never knew you - the real you. 

I knew the traumatized version of you intimately because that’s who raised me.

I knew in detail the abuse little Katie grew up with. 

I understood why you told your entire family to kiss your ass after you had the courage to speak up weren’t believed.

As an adult, I feel for you and your relentless quest to heal. 

You constantly sought out retreats, seminars courses, therapists, gurus etc, one after another…

I wish you wouldn’t have left me with whoever “the boyfriend in rotation” was at the time. With that said, I suspect you did it for my benefit - it kept me away from your family and you’d thought you’d come back a healthier parent. But mom, those men. I shouldn’t have been in their care. I desperately wanted you to stay. I would have clung to any piece of the real you that you had to spare. 

As for Grandma, your mother, whew baby. She was a vicious, cruel woman - and she had every right to be. Her husband was physically abusive to her and violated each of her children. He was an adulterer (with a whole ass second family in the same town) and a terrible human on every level…

…except with me. 

Sam Harris taught me how to catch crabs in a barrel behind the house, make cheese biscuits from scratch and how to pick and cook the perfect fried green tomato. 

But nah, that doesn’t make up for the hell he put my family through. May he never know peace. 

I remember the one glorious year when my grandmother finally left him. 

In her 50’s (after decades of being a housewife and stay at home mom) she moved out, renter her first apartment on her own, had her first job and purchased a gigantic yellow banana boat of a car. 

It was EPIC. 

When I was 8, I stayed with her one Summer. That was the first time I’d ever met my real Grandmother. This gentle woman started a garden and grew beautiful huge sunflowers that my tiny hands couldn’t reach the tops of. We made friends with a neighborhood squirrel and left a trail of nuts from outside to the living room to see how far he would come in. That wasn’t our smartest idea but dammit, we had fun. We’d sit in the banana boat car and eat ice cream cones as they dripped down our sun kissed legs while we laughed for no reason because life was sweet and light.

And then, that terrible husband of hers fell sick (I believe he faked it) and pleaded with her to come home. She reluctantly went back. I never saw that joyful version of her anymore. 

The only person in my family that I genuinely knew was my moms sister - Aunt Vicki. Vicki was deprived of oxygen at birth. As a result, she had the mental capacity of a 5-7 year old for her entire adult life. She only knew how to be herself, I loved that about Vicki Lynn. Others expectations, living in an environment of trauma and the harshness of life didn’t phase her. Instead, she loved football, touring the local news studio and spending time with her best friend Desi and stuffed animal Frisky. 

A major regret in my life is that I was not there when Vicki died, I wasn’t even aware that she was sick. My own marriage was imploding and I was too damn selfish and consumed with my own bullshit to care about anyone else. 

I always say that there’s no one I want to see in the afterlife. However, that’s not true - I want to see Vicki. I want to hug her and kiss Frisky’s ears, and apologize and tell her how much I love her. 

Nothing would make me happier than to see her and her bestie in heaven zooming around in the Desi’s little red car, still having the best time with each other. 

• I want us to live lives that we didn’t have to heal from. 

• I want us to live lives that don’t require us to mask the beauty of our humanity. 

• I want us to live in a society where we can be the truest versions of ourselves without the lens of trauma. 

As for myself, very people know the real me. 

• They know 4 year old Robin. 

• They know people pleaser Robin. 

• They know worthless, full of despair Robin. 

• They know the Robin who doesn’t believe in herself. 

• They know the Robin who is afraid to say no because she’s learned that has painful consequences

Please know that I’m trying my damndest to find me.

Not in an overpriced course, a retreat in the mountains or with a guru who has questionable boundaries - but with myself. 

I sit in the quiet. I ask myself questions. I listen for the answers. Mushrooms may be involved.

I cry often from what I hear and, that’s ok. 

It’s who I am. 

To my community and those I love, I want to know you. The truth of you. The wholeness of you. I want to know who you were before trauma told you who you had to pretend to be to survive. 

You are the people that I want to build our new world with. 

As for me, I love to laugh and I am an absolute cornball. I adore it. 

Others think I’m a serious adult because I write about poverty, systemic inequality, racism, social justice, homelessness, trash ass capitalism…and ok fine, that’s fair. 

But the real me? I just wanna eat delicious international snacks, cuddle for hours, and find a gentle, beautiful woman to spend the rest of my days with who makes me laugh. 

That’s who I am. 

Tell me friend, who are you? The real you. 

#PovertySucks