By Amber Butts
In Netflix’s new series Raising Dion, single Black mother and widow Nicole struggles to raise her young Black son in the midst of heartbreak, a move, underemployment and trauma. On the day of her son Dion’s eighth birthday, Nicole is unexpectedly called in to work. Nicole asks her neighbor Tessa, who is also a Black woman, to take Dion and his friend Esperanza to the birthday party. Nicole just started this job and needs to keep it to receive health insurance for Dion’s asthma.
Dion has been having difficulty adjusting to the new town where he’s the only Black kid at his school. Determined to bring some normalcy to their lives, Nicole asks the mother of one of Dion’s former classmates if they can do a joint birthday party for their kids. Tasha Patel, the mother, hesitantly agrees. She later reveals her racism and classism by assuming Tessa is Dion’s nanny instead of Nicole’s friend.
Nicole makes it to the party just in time to cut the cake with full knowledge that Tasha will not wait for her to arrive. At the end of the party, Nicole grabs Tessa’s arm and says, “You saved my life today.” Tessa taps her arm and replies, “You’ll save mine tomorrow.” And walks away.
I have been surrounded by this model of Black women saving each other my whole life. I’ve witnessed us in the role of brilliant strategist, fundraiser, redistributor of wealth, teacher, restorative justice worker, search party leader, investigator and lover. But I’m also thinking about how these attributions perpetuate expectations of resilience and contribute to our loneliness, exhaustion and pain.
I grew up watching a myriad of movies. But Waiting to Exhale, Daughters of the Dust, The Color Purple and Set It Off were special. What drew me to these stories wasn’t the women’s relationships with men. I was drawn to their relationships with each other.
These full, transformative, embodied, affirming and messy relationships gave me hope. They also reflected the relationships I’d seen between the women and femmes in my family, neighborhood and books. Relationships that lasted beyond prison sentences, miscarriages, grief, sadness and poverty.
In May, I attended my second Black Women Dreaming session at a house in West Oakland dedicated to the rest and comfort of Black women everywhere. I felt completely safe and alive in the house, and was transported back to a time when Black homeownership and art were norms in our city instead of anomalies.
The level of safety I experienced surrounded by rooms of Black women resting and serving each other was magical, otherworldly and familiar. I knew that if a bomb dropped right then and there, we would be untouched.
We sang, practiced, danced and wrote letters to our future and past selves. We spoke to our ancestors and honored the house by thanking it for what it provided us. We drank tea, wrote our dreams in a journal and burned incense. And when we left, protection spells were cast over us to go out into the world and be safe.
It wasn’t until last month during a bout of anxiety and depression that I came to a realization.
I had back to back panic attacks and couldn’t get my heart rate down. Concerned that I didn’t have the capacity in the moment to distinguish between what was “real” and what wasn’t, I was convinced I’d need to put myself on a 72 hour psychiatric hold to prevent any harmful behavior. I was afraid and worried that if I put myself on a voluntary hold I would never leave because I wouldn’t be let back out. I had no trust in my ability to advocate for myself once I entered the ward.
After two hours of racing thoughts, I contacted Hess and Brittany, two Black women I trust that live almost 3,000 miles away in Maryland. They listened and supported me through the experience with compassion, ease and love. And I decided not to be institutionalized.
There’s a specific level of reciprocal care that Black women exhibit with each other, no matter the distance, circumstance or place. It happens on phone calls, in welfare lines, shared bedrooms, side walks, kitchens, grave sites, concerts, classrooms, parking lots and hair salons. And though mainstream conversations center around our competitiveness with each other, those experiences aren’t the norm and are byproducts of patriarchy.
The reality is that folks claim to care about Black women, but most don’t check in on us and ask if it feels like care. Most of those folks also aren’t who we’d consider reaching out to when experiencing emergencies. Whenever I am in need, I call on Black women because I trust them not to ask unnecessary questions. I trust them/us to take action that doesn’t cause further harm. I trust them to pick me up without telling everyone that I have fallen down.
So when Nicole grabbed Tessa’s arm and Tessa responded, I had all the emotions: Appreciation. Gratitude. Anger. Understanding. Joy. Grief. And an unmistakable tired that made my bones rattle.
I’m not angry with us. I’m angry with everyone else who thinks it’s okay for Black women to be the only ones in charge of caring for Black women. The fact is, Black women are not only responsible for caring and saving each other, we’re also expected to do that work for the rest of the world. A world that demands we be cheerleaders, life bringers, inspirations—but only if we aren’t too loud. Only if we let everyone else take credit for the work we do.
I’m thirty years old. And I’ve been alive for ten years longer than I ever imagined. Twenty years if I’m honest. Though my aliveness is a testament to the Black women who have supported me, I worry that it is not enough.
My resistance to future planning has everything to do with the reality that I may be killed at any moment. I think of all the ways this could happen: Switching lanes on a freeway. Asking for help after crashing my car. Helping someone in a car crash. Catching BART with my sisters. Being shot by an off duty police officer. Saying no to a police officer attempting to take my tampon out—claiming that he was doing a drug search.
Capitalism requires the devouring of Black women’s spirits and bodies as it continues to strengthen (and create) the conditions for our abuse. Black women have the unique and unfortunate experience of being met with poverty, unemployment, skyrocketing mortality rates, harassment, violence, domestic abuse and suicidal ideation.
Black mamas are sentenced to probation for leaving their children in cars during job interviews. So while Black women are scolded and categorized as lazy for being unemployed, they are also punished for trying to find it.
Black women’s intergenerational internal and external systems of protection support our communities as well. We give our last to each other and because we are constantly redistributing money, everyone else benefits too. We do this even if we just got clear. We risk houselessness, never being current on bills, bounced checks and shame for each other because we know what it’s like. We give without expecting to get back even though we may need it back. But sometimes we don’t survive.
I’m angry because we deserve so much more than giving and receiving our last from each other. And at the same time, I think this is the most loving representation of closeness and abundance a group of folks can experience and imagine.
Black women have been conjuring up these relationships since the beginning of time. When Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lori Sharpe, Audrey Edwards and others got together for their writing group, they did rituals, they sang hymns and they showed up for each other. Just as some of our mamas and grandmothers have done in our quest for wholeness.
If you had to finish writing something, they’d take your kids, or you’d sit with theirs. This was a network of women. They lived in Queens, in Harlem and Brooklyn, and you could rely on one another. If I made a little extra money on something—writing freelance—I’d send a check to Toni Cade with a note that said, ‘You have won the so-and-so grant,’ and so on. I remember Toni Cade coming to my house with groceries and cooking dinner. I hadn’t asked her. – Toni Morrison
The truth is that without Black women, there is no world. There is no texture. There are no possibilities and offers for alternative systems. There are folks in close proximity to us that will never know how and why we despair because they haven’t made space for us to be anything but strong. And it is killing us.
On Friday night, Atatiana Jefferson stayed up late at night to play games with her nephew. Early the next morning she was killed in her home by an officer after her neighbor called the non-emergency number to do a wellness check. Her door was open and the neighbor was concerned for her safety but didn’t consider the real possibility that Atatiana, like other Black women and girls, could be killed for his mistake.
Black queer, trans and masculine of center women have especially done this work. And if folks don’t start modeling these actions, there will be none of us left.
We are not okay. We do not need to be remarkable to be alive.
The world owes Black women more than it can ever pay. And I still want it, and everyone else, to try.
Suggested Readings:
“The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehesi Coates
“Building Houses out of Chicken Legs,” Psyche A. Williams
“The Violent State: Black Women ‘s Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence,” Michelle S. Jacobs
Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race
Suggested Listens:
“Eve,” Rapsody
“Four Women,” Nina Simone
Amber Butts is a writer, organizer, grief worker and educator from Oakland, CA who believes that Black folk are already whole. Her work centers Black children, Black mamas and Black elders. It asks big and small questions about how we move towards actualizing spaces that center tenderness, nuance and joy while living in a world reliant on our terror.
Amber comes from a long line of hairdressers, storytellers and loud women from The South. She likes cheese, comic books and sings off-key.
