I Am a White Woman Who Teaches Emotional Regulation to Black Boys
The lights were low and they huddled together sharing while I gave them the space to do so.
I’m not just any white woman. I am one who similarly grew up with a father in prison, a single mom on welfare and then working for minimum wage. I met my father at 16 when I was old enough to find him. I knew his name and that he was incarcerated for drugs but nothing else. My birth certificate said father unknown, but she knew, she just didn’t want a man who didn’t want her.
He wanted her to have an abortion.
She went to have one with the 60 dollars he gave her and somehow changed her mind.
So I was born in 1976 to a 23-year-old woman who had her tubes tied right after my birth, literally before she came home from the hospital. A woman who knew most likely that her self-esteem, addictions, and mental health were not fit to parent a child. But we didn’t talk about that then.
My grandparents and her sisters helped her and she had some boyfriends here and there. I remember waking up at strange parties, at home in our little apartment with teenage babysitters, and wondering where my mom was. I remember us walking to the Pizza Hut next to our complex filling my mom’s purse with toilet…
