Let's Make Them The Last
By Christyna Pourhabib
As a Black girl, I never saw my grandmother shed a tear. She took care of the house and five grandchildren, made sure we ate our food before we drank our juice and always told us to stop running in and out of her house. She made sure we read our scriptures, thanked the Lord for waking us up each day, and sometimes she’d let us watch her stories with her as long as we didn’t make too much noise. I watched my grandmother closely, wondering what stories she would never tell us. I tried to form an image of her that could fit within my young eyes, but the more I studied her, the more that image felt incomplete. I tried to memorize her movements, but there was a heaviness I never understood, and one I knew better than to ask about. It was a heaviness that spanned decades of dismantling racist practices and fighting for civil and equal rights.
As a Black woman, I know my grandmother’s pain ran through low valleys with roots so deep that if the wound was reopened, the bleeding might never stop. I’ve lived terror and I’ve lived trauma and I understand that strength is required of the Black woman. I’ve watched women mourn for our Black men killed at disproportionate rates and I’ve watched those same women mistreated and discarded. I’ve watched women rise up in this ongoing war only to become a casualty awaiting justice long after their death. The presence of my grandmother that announced who she was before she walked into a room and filled that very room once she stepped inside, was her strength. The women that came before her and the women that came after instinctively followed suit because when struggle and injustice are all you know, remaining strong is the greatest weapon at your disposal. The longevity of perseverance in the face of oppression within the Black community is eminent and one that continues to this day.
As a Black girl, I never saw my grandmother shed a tear, but as a Black woman I know that her pain was not silent because our pain is not silent today. We continue to transform our pain into action through the books we read, the knowledge we share, the music we dance to, the art we create, the people we fellowship with and the men and women we love. Our praises and our prayers and our voices ring with years of power because despite the hatred of the color of our skin, our faith has never wavered. When I look around and see so many communities coming together, I know this uprising is an outpouring for our ancestors and for every time we’ve had to fight for our lives to matter. Our brothers and sisters are being killed while they sleep at home, listen to music, sell CDs, eat ice cream in their living room, play in the park, go for a run, wear a hoodie and fight for their last breath.
We will raise our voices. We will continue to fight.
Our strength is our superpower and our unwavering perseverance and joy
will become the resistance.
We will be heard. We will be seen. We will be protected.
For our ancestors. For us. For those to come.
