YOU HAVE TO FORGIVE TO GROW

Tennis is just a game, family is forever.

—Serena Williams

My birth mother, Caronda Bennett, is forty-eight years old. She made that decision to take my two younger siblings and leave Martellus and me with my father. Caronda was a seventeen-year-old girl with two children, a twenty-one-year-old with four children, and then a woman with five kids and a failing marriage. She chose not to raise Martellus and me.

And here she is, at my home, sitting around our dinner table with Pele and my three daughters. It’s evening on Mother’s Day 2017, one of those warm nights in Hawaii. The kind of evening where the breeze makes you feel open to the world.

I start dinner by saying grace and then I begin to cry. Six feet four, 275 pounds, and I am crying. I’m crying because I’m thinking about every moment growing up as a child, every moment we missed together, every moment I wanted to have this moment. My tears start falling and you could hear a pin drop in that kitchen. I explain to everyone—and it takes a moment for me to put it into words—that I’m not crying because I’m sad, I’m crying because I feel free of so much pain I didn’t even realize was sitting on my chest.

I am attempting to bring Caronda back into our lives, and this dinner is a part of that. I could’ve said, “To hell with her! She wasn’t here for me.” But I don’t want to show my daughters that carrying pain, anger, and resentment is a way to live. How can I be the kind of father I want to be if I can’t forgive? If I can’t forgive my birth mother, how can I be out in the world arguing for love, justice, and community? How can I hold her hostage away from my heart for something she did when she was so young? My instincts are to stay angry, but my heart says that anger is the road to ruin.

I force myself to think about the cold truth: being a parent is challenging for me, and I’m thirty-one at this time, with all the resources I could ask for. She was a child, basically, just a few years older than my oldest daughter, with more children than dollars in her pocket. I can’t walk in her shoes, but I can guess that it probably felt, day in and day out, even worse than it sounds. So how can I not forgive her?

I know this is difficult for her, too. Remember, I’m thirty-one and she’s forty-eight. We are practically peers. After grace, I tell her I am proud to know her, and I say that I feel blessed just to be able to forgive her and build a relationship so we can finally care for each other. Then everyone starts crying. I am glad my daughters, young as they are, are here to see all this. I am glad we aren’t hiding this from them. I want them to see all of this, and say to them that this is what a man looks like—a real man, not a façade. Not just a fearless person on the field. Not just someone who speaks at a rally. I don’t want them to go their whole lives and say they never saw their father cry.

When my birth mom and I were trying to reconnect, I knew my dad and my mom who raised me were nervous. They were scared that I would get hurt, and I think maybe they were scared that this could end with my loving them less. I could never love them less. But I couldn’t go on and not be connected to the person who birthed me simply because of the decisions she made at the most difficult time of her life. I told my parents that I was trying to reconnect with her because that is how they raised me. They raised me to be the kind of man who could forgive. It’s not the 1920s or the 1950s, when you were told not to be emotional, not to kiss your wife in public, not to cry in front of your daughters, and that showing charity or forgiveness was somehow a sign of weakness. This is a time when people are growing, and there is an understanding that we are more than just this flesh, right here. Spiritually, I need to forgive her to grow. I can’t love my wife fully unless I love my birth mom properly.

As we’ve gotten to know each other all these years later, I’m finding out that she is a great person. Just as much as I’ve been hurt, she has been hurting, too. She has been in Louisiana all these years, not bonded to Martellus and me. Think about how hard that’s been for her, living in that tight-knit community, as Martellus and I made our way through the NFL. Every day, people are asking her about us, these sons she has had no connection with. It must have been devastating for her, like having a wound poked, day in, day out. Like Prometheus, chained to a rock, having an eagle eat her liver every day, only for it to grow back and be eaten again. A Groundhog’s Day of suffering. But now she can say to them, with a smile, “I’m reconnecting with my family, especially with my grandchildren.”

Martellus isn’t quite there yet. He’s trying. I’m pushing him more and more to be able to do it, and he will get there in his own time. I tell him, “You have to let this go, the anger. And if you don’t, you won’t be able to grow.”

Martellus did invite her to his wedding, in 2017. I think that was a big step. Before his wedding day, he hadn’t seen her in ten years. It was a special moment, and I’m proud of him. My brother looks up to me, so the fact that I’ve made this decision to reconnect with her means he will take it seriously. It’s like when he sees me being an activist, moving forward, seeing my dedication. He has slowly transformed from being seen as a comedian into a real risk taker, someone who will put himself out there. His way is different from my way, but at the end of the day, I see him making the change. He has always been the same Martellus, but now he is the man who, in 2017, as his Patriots team went on that Super Bowl run, was raising his fist during the anthem and doing it with Belichick standing five feet away. After their win he didn’t go to the White House and was loud and proud about why.

But it’s funny how everything comes back to the beginning. We grew together through the shared hurt of our birth mother’s rejection, then we grew even closer through college, football, and being roommates. And now, as grown men, we still depend on each other. We carry each other’s burdens and shoulder each other’s pain, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. As long as I’m moving forward safely, he will continue to take these small steps. It’s like, “If Michael’s not getting hurt, then there must be a place for me to do the same.”

For years, Caronda has wanted to have a relationship, and I cannot deny her that. I don’t want my kids growing up and not knowing the full truth of who they are or who their family is. I take them to Louisiana to see Bennett Road so they can know a place where “everybody on the street is your family.” I tell them, “This is where you started. Your ancestors, after slavery, this is where they settled. After they were freed, this is the land that they had. This is the church that everybody in your family went to and that your grandfather built with his bare hands. All these people on this street, they are some form of cousin.” I think sometimes when my kids go back, they can’t believe how much family they have.

I try to tell them that when I die, I want my funeral to be like Muhammad Ali’s. He wasn’t buried in Africa. He wasn’t buried in Beverly Hills. He was buried in his hometown of Louisville. I think when you die, if you are truly at peace, you should return to the beginning, and Louisiana is the beginning for me. As much as we’re removed from Bennett Road and as much as I travel around the world, this is home. I wanted my birth mom in our lives to complete the puzzle for my children. I tell them, “Just as much as Miss Pennie is your grandma, Caronda is your grandma. They both are your grandmas, and that’s okay. If somebody don’t understand your story, they don’t need to understand it. You have three grandmothers, and that’s okay.” That’s life. I just wanted them to know that there is this lady who loves them: “She loves you, and you do exactly what she tells you to do simply because she’s your grandma.”

Now she stays with us for a week or two at a time. I’ve also taken her places she had never been before. She had never seen Florida. She had never been to Seattle. She had never seen the ocean, so I took her to see the ocean for the first time. To be her son and to be able to take her to different places, take her to eat food she’s never experienced—it’s been making up for a lot of lost time.

I don’t think I could have opened up to this without support from Pele. It was so important for her to see me be able to move past the resentment. A lot of people might be like, “She hurt you already, just move on. Let’s go to the beach.” Instead, it was, “Your birth mom should come here. I’m booking a ticket for her now.”

But that’s how we have always rolled together. We bring the support for each other. There are times I need her to be strong, to say, “No, Michael, you’re wrong. That’s not the truth.” Or, “Michael, you need to get beyond that.”

When Pele set me on course, I knew I needed to forgive and try to bring the family together because, out of us five brothers and sisters, I’m the big brother. As the big brother, you lead your family. I tell my dad all the time: he’s the father, so the family will always look up to him for certain things, but my brothers and sisters look up to me for a lot of things they would never talk to him about. To take just one example, you are probably not going to tell your mom and dad the first time you have sex! But your little brother can come to you and say, “Bro, I didn’t know what I was doing, but those thirty seconds felt really good!”

I feel like I have an even bigger responsibility with this family because of having two moms. I’m trying to keep the family together and help us grow, to push the envelope and develop together. I’m asking everyone, “How far can this family go? How much can we forgive? How much can we inspire each other to love each other more?” Some of them tell me they’re exhausted by my efforts. They say, “I’m not built to forgive this much. I just want to live.”

I tell them, “People make mistakes, and now they want to make amends. They can change, and you have to give them the chance to do that.” My birth mother has evolved. You can’t torture people with distance when they are trying to do right. This country has torn apart the Black family—the African family—in a thousand different ways. We cannot tear each other apart. That’s a form of resistance we need to take seriously.

The next step, in my mind, is my mom and birth mother and dad, all sitting together around the table, forgiving one another in front of my daughters. I have told my dad that this is what I hope to see next, and who knows, maybe by the time you are reading this, it has already happened. That needs to be the next step for us to grow. Once the kids and grandkids see the elders forgive, the barrier will be broken and our family will flourish.

My dad will be the one who needs to shift. That man is like granite. He’s old school, from a generation that still sees emotions as something you don’t share, like an old-movie cowboy. I think he still carries pain about my birth mother all these years later. I think he never forgave her, and until he forgives her the wound won’t heal. That will happen. I feel it in my heart, but I don’t think he’s there yet. Nothing against him, but it puts pressure on me to be the bridge between people and the glue to hold us together, to keep pushing the envelope, and to try to move everyone out of their comfort zones. This book is called Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, but forgiving your family? That is one thing that truly does transcend skin color. That’s on all of us to confront. If it makes us uncomfortable, that’s a sign we need to try harder.

As for my mom who raised me, Miss Pennie, she is a little scared, too. I don’t think she’d ever admit it, but I think she carries some fear that our relationship could suffer. I want Miss Pennie to understand that she is my mom. She raised me. Everything that I am is because of her. Her gift of teaching me how to question the world is something I’ll never be able to repay. I want her to know that no matter how much my relationship with my birth mom grows, it doesn’t take anything away from our bond. It makes her an even greater mother, a greater human being, to have done what she did: taking on somebody else’s children and raising them as her own. Her whole life is a testament to her character. There’s more than enough place for both of my moms in my heart and around my table. That’s my dream: a Mother’s Day celebration, where all the mothers are together. We go around the table, my daughters, Pele, and then me, and we all say what our mother means to us—and I get to talk twice. That’s my idea of peace.

The pain that I’ve felt on this journey of reconnecting with my birth mom is something I need to share. I want to share it so maybe someone who is experiencing something similar doesn’t feel all alone in the world. I think when you feel isolated is when you do self-destructive things, like take your life or harm yourself or withdraw and become some kind of hermit. We share our stories so we feel less alone.

I can’t separate the efforts to forgive and put my family together with my efforts to try and organize to change the world. Forgiveness has always been central to our Black freedom struggle. I mentioned this to my dad to try to help him along on this road. I said, “Think about Dr. Martin Luther King. He literally could walk into a room and be spit on, kicked, hit with a brick, have lit cigarettes flicked at his face, and keep walking, keep a level head, and show love. He was literally walking and forgiving people as they committed these transgressions because he knew to get to where he wanted, spiritually, he had to do it.”

I don’t know if I can ever reach that level. I still get mad when a coach yells at me or some member of the media asks me a dumbass question. (Five minutes after losing a game: “So, how do you feel about that loss?” How do you think I feel? Even Dr. King might smack someone for that dumb shit.) But I think that has to be the goal: the ability to forgive someone on the spot. It’s so easy to throw a punch. It’s so easy to shoot back. But to be able to forgive? There’s an organization of the families of murder victims that protests against the death penalty. That’s the level we need to aspire to. It’s not easy when revenge is held up in movies and music as the ultimate expression of manhood, instead of how it should be seen: as the response of the child.

I would argue that to get to that level of mercy and grace starts at home. It starts with forgiving people. I told that to my dad, and he was silent. Then he said, like that old-movie cowboy, “I never even thought about that.” It was small, but I felt him move in my direction, toward where I hope he can go.

In each case, the need to forgive is a precondition for achieving justice. I can forgive anyone for anything they have said or done, or that their ancestors said or did, as long as they are willing to work with me to make sure today’s version of Jim Crow—from mass incarceration to inferior access to education and nutrition, to police violence—gets beaten back. There is a need to forgive but never forget, because if we are not honest about the past, we will never change our present or future. If it makes some people uncomfortable, then that’s the price of change. It’s not comfortable to confront the part of our history that make us feel shame. It’s not comfortable for me to sit for the anthem while people boo. It’s not comfortable to lose sponsors or give away endorsements. It’s not comfortable to go to parts of the world or parts of this country where suffering is a way of life. But guess what? You have to be uncomfortable to grow. When you grow as a child, it’s so intense that your body is knocking your own teeth out of your mouth so stronger, better teeth can grow in. When your bones are growing when you’re twelve, thirteen years old, it can be so uncomfortable you can’t sleep at night. If we feel uncomfortable, we are doing something right. That discomfort is just a period of transition.

It’s not comfortable to see people in Flint, Michigan, without clean water. It’s not comfortable to see Philando Castile’s murder at the hands of police, live-streamed on Facebook. It’s not comfortable to hear gymnasts tell their stories of being sexually assaulted. It’s not comfortable to talk about CTE. It’s not comfortable seeing kids too tired to move. But the ultimate question is, What are you going to do? Are you going to lay it on the line? Are you going to be a changemaker? Remember what John Carlos said: “There is no partial commitment to justice. You are either in or you’re out.” Trust me: if you’re willing to be uncomfortable, you will also feel blessed, if you can see it through and make it to the other side.