Respect Your Mother Part 2

Estimated Reading Time 9 minutes | Song: Eve Gene by Kirby and Rapsody

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I left of the last ritual in writing sharing some ways you could connect with a few podcast (ya know, since there so much more to be done these days so listening while working or working out or caregiving is easier) that share the historical breakdowns of our relationship to nature and women and how politics have been involved or made an impact. In fact, as I write this it is the night after the current administration has written an Executive Order to rid and defund museums that are “divisive” in regards to American history, stopping the funding of Women’s History Museum and defunding the Blacksmithonian. This is exactly why we need everyone to do their part in our collective liberation. This is the time we need to remember the indigenous practices of our ancestors like oral tradition and storytelling. Regardless of who chooses to be in the position of power and leadership in this country, we cannot allow them to dictate to us our history and leave out our collective common memory. 

In the last ritual in writing for Respect Your Mother, I addressed the history and how we got here and this one is almost similar in nature as I attempt to conclude such a huge concept, except this time when we speak of our mother, we are speaking of the Motherland, Alkebulan (Africa), Nature our Mother and our actual birthing mothers or mother figures in our lives. After all, Tupac was the one who reminded us in Keep Ya Head Up ,

Alkebulan

Africa has always been nicknamed The Motherland, because she is the birthplace of all civilization. When archeologists dig and dig a little deeper they find the Earth was and has always been black. The oldest human remains found on our planet are of a Black woman named ‘Lucy”. With Alkebulan being the birthplace of civilization and the origins of humanity, we have to acknowledge the ways in which the imperial world has continuously and historically exploited her. From the theft of resources (still ongoing today in places like Congo), to the division of land (Berlin Conference) and the theft of her millions of children for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Africa has always had its own natural resources and plenty of other countries ready to exploit the resources and the people to benefit from them.

Image credit: EIU, World Mining Data, 2022

Mother Nature

If there is no regret or remorse in regards to the exploitation and extraction from the Motherland and the abuse of her children, can we understand why it would be easier for us to do the same in other places regarding Mother Nature? Elder Malidoma Patrice Some shares in Ritual: Power, Healing and Community, “Every moment you display this kind of power to the world, that power isolates you. You become displaced by the power you display because that power is also displaced through you.”  I’ve received these words as in, when we seek power or exercise power over others or the rest of the natural world, that same power will displace us from others and nature itself. Of course there is always a way we could course correct and begin to repair our relationship with the Earth and our relatives in nature, but it also requires us to acknowledge the many ways we have caused harm and look to those who have always been stewards of this land to guide us on how to repair and heal. We know this is possible because during the pandemic as we were quarantining across the globe, many places reported the return of dolphins to places where they hadn’t existed in a long time, or the ways the pollution in the air or water were greatly reduced and the biodiversity was improved (links). 

This is where we really have to tap in and acknowledge that although we may not be the ones that caused colonization or the exploitation of nature, we have been benefactors of that exploitation. When you look around your home, the things you are purchasing are the necessities to have or are they just nice things? When we have witnessed or experienced places engaging in land acknowledgement how have we expanded beyond acknowledging whose lands we are on to supporting their movements for land back and rematriation, which would benefit us all? I regularly share the wisdom of our indigenous relatives about how to move beyond land acknowledgement and will write more about this in April since we will be celebrating and engaging in Earth Month. 

Our relationship to nature and Earth begins with us acknowledging the state of our current relationship and engaging in conditions or methods of repair. This may look like before planting or gardening this year, asking for permission from the Earth. Checking out the environmental impact or footprint you and your family have on the environment. Witnessing what is needed or necessary in our local area in regards to the land, like showing up for a zoning meeting where developers are wanting to come in and clear more trees. It could be finding out the source of where water is taken from to go to your home, or even where your local recycling facility is.

My late mother, Tracy C. Hardy and I circa 2010.

Relating To Our Mother

I’ve shared many times over the difficulty of becoming a mother while recently having a mother transition from this realm. As much as I would like to say it gets easier with time, it really hasn’t. There are moments where I just want my own mother or to at least call her and ask if the foolishness I am navigating with these young people is something I did too so I can find some sense of normalcy. I do not have to opportunity to ask everyday questions like that or hear my mothers voice or invite her to do intergenerational events like preparing my daughter for her first dance or perspectives on becoming a woman from someone trusted but other than me. AND as much as I love appreciate the mother I had in this lifetime, I also am aware of the privilege it was to not only have her as my guide but to know what amount of labor and love she put into raising my siblings, my father and I. Wheww, just supporting each of our personalities today is a bit much so to know she was doing it with a lack of support system, unmedicated and without any alcohol or plants. Lifetime Motherhood Award. 

I know my relationship with my mom was not perfect and I do recognize it to be a privilege because I also know many people and women in particular that could not or did not have a sober or present mother to do anything with or for them other than birth them into this life. I am not that healing guide that will ever tell someone to continue putting up with the toxic parent merely because they are a parent, but rather do the healing work necessary for you to move forward in this life. Even if it means recognizing the apology that you will never receive from that individual. 

As a Black woman and mother in this world, because of the impact of colonization especially on the mind, I do not think you can decolonize your relationship to your mother or motherhood without acknowledging your own mother wounds and the roots of colonialism within it. I find myself these days with my pre-teen, wanting to do everything in my power to keep her safe. And at the same time find myself telling her “the world is not a safe place, speak up for yourself,” while yelling at her. I know from my lived experience the world is NOT a safe place and with the most recent revoking of rights for women, it is even less safe than before for my daughter. Although I am sharing these things with her partially out of fear of her being naive and protection for not wanting things I experienced to happen to her, I also have to find better ways of imparting wisdom she can use versus a power dynamic where her autonomy is revoked. 

A book, I suggest reading is “Motherhood So White” by Nefertiti Austin because she unpacks the ways that motherhood looks different for Black women in America and the ways our parenting has been challenged and as a result reflected on who we are as women when our children go into the world responding a particular way or making their life choices. It hasn’t been safe or easy for Black women to parent when we have not only existed in survival mode but often indoctrinated that our children must be controlled and parenthood must be a struggle instead of a joyful experience or journey. I share these things to say, even as a child of our mothers we can acknowledge the ways these same practices could have informed the ways our mothers or grandmothers chose to parent or not parent us. Our experience with our mothers is often the greatest impact to how we will choose to mother or become mothers, moving from our own traumas and mother wounds. 

Often Black mothers are not viewed in the same lens as white mothers. There is no 4th trimester typically, there is often a lack of village and no celebration of the mother coming into the mothering stage of her life outside of celebrating a baby shower or more recently gender reveals. After the pregnancy is over for most Black women, it is back to work we go or right into the throws of motherhood without any additional care extended to us. This can severely impact not only our physical bodies but the stress and post traumatic stress to our minds, bodies and souls. Black women are often not witnessed in our entirety, if we are someone’s mother we are only viewed as a mother. No longer a sex symbol or goddess, no longer having any desires, dreams or life outside of our roles of mothering and being a wife. Losing our own physical autonomy to allow this other being to grow within our bodies and afterward navigating the expectations of society to snap back into an acceptable physical size, weight and shape. Motherhood is the most grotesque hood I’ve ever experienced and it only shift as the children continue to grow and shift. I’m also sure more of this will come up as we get closer to Mother’s Day.

Then how can we hold both things to be true at once, our mothers are whole and entire beings with dreams, goals and desires outside of serving our needs as children AND we see many of them for the loving nurturing sources of life they have always been to us? Women are life givers regardless of whether we have birthed physical life, or ideas and movements. Women have always been trailblazers in seeing a vision for the future and collective future and if nothing else we can honor them as collective mothers. 

Rooted 

So much of the way we know ourselves and handle ourselves starts with the ways we have been cared for and nurtured by our mothers or those that have served in maternal roles to us in our lives. If they modeled abundance, resilience, strength, we find it easier to take on those same attributes. The Earth has always provided for our humanity whether it is food, light, shelter or care even when we (collectively) have been extractive and not reciprocal. The Motherland has continued to be pillaged by colonial powers that continue to cause war and feed resistance to self-determination. We have to find ways to not only become rooted within our personal ives but our familial, communal and global collective lives. Our connection to honoring the Earth and mothers in our lives are primary practices of engaging colonialism. 

On Wednesday, April 2, 2025 at the College of Charleston with the Department of Agriculture and Sustainability, Germaine Jenkins of Fresh Future Farm is screening her documentary Rooted.