The Greatest Act of Self-Love: Deleting Misogynoir from Your Life
For as long as I can remember, I have been an activist. My mother and father instilled in me that it was my duty to fight for my race, especially to fight for those who could not do it for themselves. And while I still hold those ideals in my heart and mind, I’ve decided to add on some conditions for the sake of my mental health. As of 2020, I’m pledging to delete any and every form of misogynoir (hatred towards Black women) from my life, and that includes fighting for people who choose to exhibit it. For a lot of Black women, including myself, we have had to nearly beg and plead for respect from everyone, especially Black men. Meanwhile, when something tragic happens in our communities, Black women are expected to run to the scene and fix every single problem that presents itself.
For me, enough is enough. As a Black woman, I understand that my love and support is absolutely necessary. However, I believe that love is deserving of love. It should go towards those who will reciprocate it, and not take advantage of what I have to offer. So many Black women are pillars of their communities, taking care of everyone, whether they deserve it or not. We grow tired, as many movements and crusades are built on our backs and our hard work, only for us to gain absolutely nothing in return. We have proven ourselves to be not only worthy of respect, but also adoration and admiration as well. Therefore, we shouldn’t be negotiating our level of value with anyone, plain and simple. It all gets tiring after a while, and after all, we don’t fight these battles because we want to, we fight these battles because we have to. I didn’t choose a world like this; there has not been a single day in my life where I wanted to go out into society and willingly face discrimination. There hasn’t been a single day where I felt mentally prepared to deal with the micro aggressions or racial undertones that I receive when I make my presence known in a room. Like many other Black women around the world, I’m exhausted from a society that wants to dance to my rhythm, but often ignores my blues. They’ve grown fond of wearing our skin, but care nothing about our struggle.
A beautiful thing about the time we live in is that we have now come into the age of the modern-day Black girl. Black women have started movements and groups that advocate for their own personal wellness, with them prioritizing their own mental health over everything else. What used to be a stressful existence is now being worked out through things such as meditation, maintaining a healthy diet, exercise, skincare routines, and therapy. However, sometimes those things may still not be enough, with the headache of misogynoir being ever-so present and deeply rooted in our society. For many of us as Black women, we may have to take an extra step to ensure our well-being. The greatest act of self-love, from what I’ve seen, can be to try eliminate (or at least reduce) the amount of misogynoir we come into contact with on a daily basis. This will not only include unfollowing certain accounts on social media, but removing certain family members and loved ones from our lives because they don’t have our best interest. Sometimes, misogynoir can be so embedded in our existences, that sometimes we might not even see it when it’s right in front of our very eyes, and instead we suffer subconsciously.
In her book, All About Love: New Visions, author and poet Bell Hooks, one of my many heroes writes, “One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.” For us, that exact same love factors into what we choose to let in our personal space and how we let it affect our thoughts and feelings. As much as we need to take up space as Black women and girls by showing the world what we have to offer, we must be in the correct headspace to do so. Although this may be an extremely arduous task to commit to, the results are glorious. When I cut both anti-blackness and misogyny out of my life, I felt as though a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I’ve come to understand that loving myself and practicing self care was far deeper than telling myself that I was worthy of love; it also included filtering out things that were made to intentionally hurt me or break my spirit.