Black Girl Chronicles
A couple Sunday afternoons ago, I went to a get together that a friend of mine coordinated. I knew from the group message to 10-20 women on Facebook that I didn’t know the majority of those invited, but I was okay enough with that to still go. I walk in and there were, I think, 8 others and about half of them I knew. We talked and laughed and had a great time. This sounds normal, but a fact that wouldn’t typically matter really is that every single one of the women I was talking to and laughing with were
other beautiful, black women. I’d never been in the space I’d found myself in… ever. These women were teachers and administrators and case managers and singers and single and married and mothers… and while I’ve been around women who’ve held such roles, I’ve never been around all black women who’ve held such roles… black women like myself. That Sunday night I realized something deep inside me, deep inside this place of identity that I didn’t know was wounded or uncertain. I realized that while I love myself and love who Father has created me to be, that girl is abstract though she is certain. I love her insides, but her outsides she’s felt she doesn’t belong.
From grade school through high school, I just wanted to blend in when it came to the girls around me. I thought that straight hair was the standard though I didn’t really know anything beyond that, after all I’d had relaxers since before I started Kindergarten. I didn’t know girls with weaves or wigs or natural hair. And from my teacher’s distance from my hair when she would French braid my classmates hair, I knew I’d never match up to being like my other female classmates who all happened to be white. I also wasn’t created to have their hair… I didn’t know that though. I was the only black girl in my class K-8 in private school and I didn’t have any friends who looked like me.
I got to high school and it was evident I didn’t match up. The saga continued of Charis being the “whitest black girl” anyone had ever met. The black girls called me white. The white girls called me white. And I would get angry and not know why, I mean beyond when someone would tell me that I “talk white” or tell me “you don’t act black”. It always seemed to boil down to the way I spoke. I just wanted to be an educated woman, no matter that I was also black. But there was this deep sense that society said I can’t speak clearly in complete sentences and still keep my Black Card. There was nowhere I belonged but with the people who were like me—my family—or the place like home where we didn’t talk about race or ethnicity or “how white Charis is”—the camp.
I left my friend’s house that Sunday evening feeling like I never knew I didn’t feel. I felt this sense of belonging that I never realized I was lacking. We talked about things I didn’t have to explain like hair and curl patterns and relaxers. Hair. I didn’t realize that my journey of going natural in 2013 would also be a key to this deeply lacking sense of belonging. I’d never had wigs or weave or braids, just an Afro. Those were signifiers of a group of people with whom I didn’t feel like I belonged or fit in. That’s what I’d gathered from “whitest black girl” Charis’s experiences… Oreo, coconut, all things dark on the outside and white on the inside.
So here I was sitting with these black women talking about hair and life and tattoos. It was loud and full of laughter. There was no volume check, it just felt like home. It just felt like I finally belonged and I wasn’t the minority or the only black girl in the crowd. My blackness wasn’t overlooked or invisible, it just was.
I’d felt belonging before. Like when I’m amongst other women who deeply love Jesus or other women who have experienced pregnancy loss or delayed fertility. But this was different. This belonging felt like a marrying of my being black with my identity; marrying my skin with my core; an invitation to a culture I’ve had a chair with my name on it but the invitation never made it to my address so it appeared I wasn’t invited. This was purely who I was created to be. Jesus doesn’t overlook my being black and He doesn’t just see my blackness as my hair. There is something deep within me that I’m just now discovering and somehow it has to do with me and being this beautiful black woman He’s created me to be.
So for me, here’s to adventuring on to discovering a new level of identity and who Father has created me to be… and what this fun addition called crochet braids/faux locs is. As for you, I challenge you to not get settled in to who you are now and not get stuck in the idea that “this is just who I am, like it or leave it”. I challenge you to uproot the lies of how others have labeled you. I challenge you to dig deeper, allow growth, and to not stop discovering and seeking Father’s heart as a means of discovering who He is to discover who you are, truly. It doesn’t always have to be taxing or like you’re on some archaeological dig. No, friend, when you dig into Him, you find life not dead things. It may be like hunting for diamonds and breaking through hard, ugly exteriors, but you might just be surprised at what and who you find when you pursue Him and look at you through His eyes.