I'm a Black Woman, I'm a Black Mother

My journey into motherhood started ideally. My husband and I spent the evening hanging out after dinner, and within a few hours of sleeping, I began feeling contractions. We waited until the right time as instructed by my obstetrician, before calling to let him know I was in labor. Soon we were off to the hospital to be settled into a room on the maternity floor. After checking in, I was prepped, hooked to monitors and advised that it might be a while before the baby arrived.

I was nervous and excited. My  husband tried to comfort me while I experienced contractions and he tried to keep his own feelings of anxiety and helplessness in check because all he could do was wait and watch. Between the end of labor and being wheeled to my room post delivery, he made the phone calls to announce that our first son was born. Everyone from grandparents to friends and extended family visited us. They all came to see the newest member of the family. There was so much happiness, joy and gratitude for the birth of a beautiful and healthy son.

Looking back, I wondered if I knew. I will never forget the phone call. My son was just about a week old; I remember because it was the day of my wedding anniversary. My husband and I planned to celebrate a whirlwind two years that included a marriage, finishing medical school and having a son. I heard the hesitancy in my mom’s voice, then the quiver. I knew something was wrong. I pushed her to tell me why she was upset. She spoke about how much my son looked like me when I was born. Something clicked and I asked the question I’d always believed was true, “Is my father white?” After a long pause, I heard the answer, “Yes.” She was distraught, but I did my best to comfort her; however I was gutted. 

Up until that moment, I never questioned being a Black woman or being a Black mother. Yes, I heard the following questions, “What are you?,”  “Are you adopted?”,while growing up because I looked so different from my parents and brother, but I shrugged it off confident in my identity. My parents raised me as Black.  But suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. How was I going to raise my son when I didn’t know who I was?

Before my son was born, I had hoped that he wouldn’t be light-skinned, or look like me because of what I dealt with growing up, people questioning my ambiguous race. I wanted my son to be proud that he was Black, as I was. I didn’t want him to be challenged with people doubting his Blackness or questioning whether he was black enough.  But as he grew, that was something I couldn’t protect him from. There would be challenges to his identity, as there were challenges to mine.

So as I raised my first son, I was coming to terms with my new identity of being bi-racial. I can’t fully explain the anger and shame I had, of feeling like an imposter. Not feeling black enough and not wanting to claim my whiteness. But I had to keep moving forward because I had a son to raise and no matter my identity struggle, my son was Black. 

My ambiguous identity was a little bit of a struggle for him as he got older. He and his younger brother told me so when they became older. They shared how their friends thought I was white; and they were questioned about their racial identity amongst their predominantly white classmates who had different expectations of what a Black kid should look like. It hurt to hear what they and their friends believed I was despite the efforts my husband and I did to socialize them about their racial identity and growing up within a family of diverse skin hues.  But it was a blessing in disguise, it forced us to have  more direct conversations about race and racial identity. 

My pain became my opportunity to share with my sons who I was and to talk about race. I realized that, as a family and even with my extended family, there were never in depth conversations about our Blackness. My husband is also light-skinned, but he resembles his family. My children noticed how different I was from the rest of my family. 

I realized that the opportunity to talk with them about race would be missed if I didn’t start confronting what I had been running from, my shame.  I shared with them that even though I was biracial, I was proud to identify as a Black woman.  I let them ask questions and answered them the best I could. As time went by, our conversations about race deepened and included discussions about racism, why are young Black men being killed by police, and whether they were black enough because they didn’t look like the Black kids they saw on television. They were learning and accepting their own identity of being Black. As they grew older, so did I. I’m a Black woman, I’m a Black mother.