Black Joy by Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts

Author:Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

18 Joy as Gap Filler

The White woman on the screen seemed like she was of the kind and harmless variety. The type who battled her inner Karen tendencies like Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga and usually, mostly, came out on top.

In a soft, gentle tone, she said, “If it’s safe to do so, close your eyes and see yourself at the age of the rift. Take her in. What is she doing? Ask her what she needs. It’s okay if she won’t look at you. She might not be able to trust you yet.”

The inner child meditation I’d been doing for several weeks required me to visualize myself interacting with my younger self. It was one of the hardest exercises I’d ever participated in. The first thing I noticed when I attempted to engage with elementary school Tracey was the gaps in my memories. At first, I could only see her hair—cornrows on some days, two large plaited ponytails on others. But I could never see her face. After overcoming that through the use of old pictures, I then struggled with seeing the room eight-year-old me was in or recognizing the voices that hovered over both of us. It was frustrating. I ached to remember it all, but the images would only appear in fragments. I knew my inner child was blurring my vision for a reason. Probably to keep me and her safe.

She had every right to do this.

Writers are expected to have really rich lives from which to draw our narratives. In fact, my favorite writers know how to interrogate their feelings about any given situation going on with them personally or in the larger world. There is a hyper self-awareness that I share with them, but while going through this particular type of healing journey I hadn’t yet gotten to the point where I felt free enough to unleash a level of vulnerability that would allow me to be okay no matter what my memories revealed. There was a block there and the question I kept revisiting was: How does one be Black, a woman, have joy, and stay safe all at the same time?

My life taught me that I could only have one or two of those at any given time. I could embrace who I am fully as a Black woman and maybe I could experience occasions of joy because of that, but doing so might mean I would never feel safe. To relax my mind, heart, and body might mean opening myself up to harm. In fact, complete physical or mental relaxation has always felt like death to me. It’s a parting gift of PTSD.

Now, if you’d asked me about this five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. Or at least I would have pretended to not believe you. In recent years, though, the evidence had become increasingly clear. For at least a decade, if not more, I was walking around with every major muscle in my body clenched tight in a perpetual state of contraction.

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