The Valley of O.P.P
LESTER WAS RAYNELL AND RONNEL’S BIG, STRONG, PLAYFULLY LOVING DADDY. HE WAS A CROSS BETWEEN A giant teddy bear and a superhero. He would do anything, be anywhere, to save, protect, or entertain his daughters. In return, they looked up to him, around for him, and always knew, no matter what, Daddy would always be there. Then one day, something happened. One day, something clicked in Lester’s mind. On that day, he changed from a teddy bear into a worm. From a superhero into an animal. On that day, liquor became more important to Lester than his daughters’ love. Power became more important than peace. On that day, Lester began to fight in the street. More important, he began to fight at home. Without warning or provocation, Lester began to fight with—actually, it was more like beating the hell out of—his daughters’ mother.
Raynell was the oldest of the two and therefore had the longer memory. She remembered the good times, the good days, when Lester had loved their mother as much as he did them. Ronnel could not remember back that far and so she paid close attention to the very present memories. Screaming in the hallway, the dining room, the living room. Blood on her mother’s face, arms, neck, and legs. Police at the door, running through the hallway, crashing to the floor in the dining room, guns drawn in the living room. Lester sitting in the police car crying, then screaming to his daughters to help him. Mother on her hands and knees scrubbing blood off the floor. It was all too much for Ronnel’s short memory and tiny brain. She watched in horror, becoming more and more frightened. Even more, angry. Raynell was always there, holding her, rocking her, reminding her of the good old days. At first, Ronnel simply could not remember them. Then she chose not to remember them, choosing instead to hate her father and to hate her mother for bringing her father into her life.
Lester eventually died from too much liquor and fighting and too little peace. Raynell would stop by her father’s tiny, stinking, dismal room on her way home from school every day. She would bring him the fruit from her school lunch and anything she could rummage from the refrigerator at home. Ronnel would never go up with her sister to see their daddy. She would sit on the stairs pouting and cursing, telling Raynell how stupid she was to waste her time on that drunken pig. But Raynell would remind her that he was still their father and he had not always been this way.
One day, Ronnel finally convinced Raynell to eat her own fruit and let the pig sit in his own crap for a day because she deserved to play. It was that very day that Lester got into an argument with one of his drunken neighbors. In his staggering stupor, he lunged at the man, who was just sober enough to push Lester backwards onto the rusty fire escape, which broke, dropping Lester, headfirst, down three stories. Their mother cried when they called her and told her. Raynell blamed herself. Ronnel got even angrier.
Their mother’s grief took her into the church and a vow of celibacy at the age of thirty-four. Ronnel’s anger took her in and out of the principal’s office, juvenile court, reform school, and eventually, the state prison for women. Raynell’s guilt took her off the honor roll, out of college, into a dead-end job which kept her near her family; in and out of church with her mother, up and down the road to the state prison; alone most of the time, and sad the other part. Lester, although he had been dead many years, continued to run his ex-wife and his daughters’ lives from the grave. They were either so devoted to, afraid of, angry with,or despondent over what he had, or they had, done or not done, there wasn’t much room for anyone or anything else in their lives.
When we are children, we have no idea that our parents and their issues are temporary, transitory conditions in our lives. At every moment, parents make choices or fail to make decisions which turn the course of their lives and ultimately affect their children. When we are children, we have no choice other than to accept what is going on. However, as we mature, in learning how to make our own decisions, we must separate “their stuff” from “our stuff,” their issues from our own issues.
When I was growing up, somebody told me that I didn’t like okra. Whenever it was served, my brother or grandmother would quickly remind me, “Oh, that’s right, you don’t like okra.” I was a thirty-year-old woman with children when my next-door neighbor invited my family and me to dinner. On the menu was okra, mixed with butter beans. It looked and smelled delicious. I decided to try some. It was absolutely wonderful. I got the recipe, went home, and prepared a huge pot. Whenever I prepared the dish after that, I wondered where I could have gotten the idea that I didn’t like okra.
For Raynell and Ronnel, it was their father’s alcoholism. For me, it was okra. For many Black women, our minds and lives have been drastically altered by O.P.P., things other people have told us or done to us in response to their issues. Things we have seen other people do and their experiences become our own. It begins in childhood and spills over into our adult life. We are weighed down by burdens which have little, if anything, to do with us. We suffer, sometimes giving up on ourselves because the weight is too much to carry. The woman’s inborn instinct to serve, nurture, and protect leads to needless sacrifice as we attempt to help, save, and fix other people. We pick it up as children, carry it on as adults. A few lucky ones are able to recognize it in their lives, and still cannot figure out what to do about it.In all cases, O.P.P. is like a lasso. It holds us back. Pulls us down. Ties us up in situations which are not of our own making.
We are not indebted to anyone in this life. We are accountable to some, responsible for others. We are never, however, obligated to take the weight of another’s life on our shoulders. When we do, we become toxically poisoned by the dreaded affliction of O.P.P.: other people’s problems, priorities, principles, perspectives, purposes, presumptions, and in some cases, other people’s people encroach upon and infest our lives. Some of us are so bogged down with O.P.P. we have no life. There are so many things others want from us, expect of us, or do to us that we get confused and begin to believe it is our duty to be whatever other people need us to be.
Are you so embroiled in the lives of others and their conflicts that you have lost track of your own life? Other than your children, is there someone you believe that you cannot leave? Someone you must help? Someone who needs you in order to survive? Are you angry? Are you so angry with people for what they have done to you, or said to you, that you have spent a major portion of your life trying to get back at them? prove them wrong? keep them out of your heart? mind? life? Are you where you want to be in your life? Or are you somewhere doing what someone told you to do, believing you cannot do anything else? O.P.P., Other People’s Problems, Perspectives, and Purposes, is the number one killer of the spirit of Black women.
In the Valley of O.P.P. are the experiences we have when we fail to develop and honor our inner authority, the authority which gives us the strength to stand on our own. Each time we give our lives over to the issues, priorities, and problems of other people, we dishonor our inner authority. Without it, we are not free to pursue our dreams, goals, and personal fulfillment. When we do not believe we have the authority to choose for ourselves, or have been trained to believe that someone else knows better than we what is good for us, we lose sight of and touch with our mental and spiritual authority. When we acquiesce, give up our lives to the problems, perspectives, and purposes of other people, we lose our sense of personal power and freedom. We are bound by responsibility to others. We act from a place of anger toward or fear of others. Our inner strength wanes. Our mind is confused. We cannot identify what we want from what others have told us to want. Our perspective on life is not our own and the purposes of others motivate our behavior.
I am always amazed at the number of Black women who claim the limitations and restrictions of their families and environments. Reverend Johnnie Coleman, a Christian New Thought teacher and founder of Christ Universal Temple in Chicago, says: “You don’t have to claim the konkus and the bonkus because it runs in your family!” Your grandmother’s high blood pressure is not your issue! Your grandfather’s big ears, flat feet, or crooked nose is not your issue. Just because all of your family, since the beginning of time, lived on X street, in Y city, in Z state, does not mean you have to live there with them. You are free! You have the power, authority, and most of all, the right to create your own reality. If you insist on hanging onto the family tree, you may very well find a noose around your neck.
ISSUES BY PROXY!
Jesse’s mother had a bad heart. Even as a young woman, there were many things she could not do. She considered Jesse’s birth to be a blessing from God since all the doctors had told her she would never be able to give birth. Jesse grew up hearing from her mother what a blessing she was, how lucky she was to be alive, and all the things she could not do because her mother had a bad heart. It didn’t help matters much that Jesse’s father had left the home. He helped to make a bad matter worse. Without him, Jesse’s mother did not have enough money to take care of herself, never had a moment of rest, did not know how she was going to make it, and could not stand men.
Of course, Jesse got it all confused. To her, men gave you a bad heart, took your money to keep you from doing what you needed to do, and wanted you to work all your life for nothing. Jesse did not go out much as a teenager because her mother needed her rest. She could not wait up for her. She did not go away to college because her mother could not make the trip to see her. Jesse never wore makeup because she was so lucky to be alive it did not matter what she looked like. She never dated because she was afraid of men. What Jesse did to occupy her time, overcome her fears, and alleviate the impact of her mother’s heart condition was eat. Jesse ate all of her pain, fear, and anger away. She ate until she could not do anything or go anywhere because she weighed 319 pounds. At that point, she was too ashamed to go anywhere
Some of us eat. Some of us drink. Others sleep around. Some of us hide behind religion, real and imaginary illnesses, and obligations to family members. A few of us run away, not sure of where to go or what to do. When we get where we think we are supposed to be, we cannot function. We are afraid. Many of us just sit. We sit and make excuses, wondering why we can’t stop sitting. We sit because we have a pile of O.P.P. in our laps. We carry the burden of O.P.P. on our shoulders. It bends our backs, warps our minds, and sometimes, if we are not careful, it will break our spirit.
LAY THEIR BURDENS DOWN!
In response to your gender, your ethnicity, your economic background, the neighborhood in which you live, the schools you attend, the shape of your body, and the length of your hair, the world holds a particular view of you and has a purpose for you. White people are expected to be wealthy. Black people are expected to be poor. Fat people are not expected to dance. Thin people are expected to be good runners. Italians run the Mafia. Irish run the bars. Jews run the banks. WASPs run the corporations. Chinese run the laundry. Koreans run the vegetable markets. Blacks just run. The world and the people in it have a perspective of you based on what is individually and collectively believed about you in response to your God-given, unalterable characteristics. You are, with or without knowledge of that perspective, expected to live up to what others think about you and want from you. If you rebel against your prescribed place, you are wrong, again.
O.P.P. is particularly insidious as it operates against Black women. As people of the darker hue, we are still perceived as lazy heathens, unworthy of trust, incapable of self-sufficiency. We are expected to believe these perspectives no longer exist. As women, we are still perceived as useless, powerless subjects; beasts of burden, tools of pain and pleasure. The purpose of this perception is to maintain masculine dominance as the all-powerful and controlling factor in our lives. The world despises as much as it fears us. While marveling at our ability to survive, the world still fears that Black women may eventually evolve in such a way as to disrupt the status quo.
We respond to the unspoken perspectives and purposes by despising and being fearful of our individual and collective energy. We know we can, but we are afraid to honor the inner authority which will tell us how. We discount that inner authority because we are taught it does not exist or cannot be trusted. Black women are reared to be dependent on and in some cases addicted to what others tell us, expect from us, or demand of us. The social indoctrination of Black women is the basis of O.P.P.
Someone asked me about the sometimes obvious “martyrdom syndrome,” a special kind of O.P.P. that operates among Black women. This woman, a white woman, explained how several Black women she knew seemed to be burdened down by taking care of and doing for others the very things those people should be doing for themselves. I had never thought about it. As a Black woman, I accept that there are simply certain things you must do, are expected to do, as a function of your identity. If your mother gets sick, you take care of her. If your sister dies, you take her children. If your husband, boyfriend, mate is not working, you support him. It is a given, as a Black woman, that you step in and do whatever needs to be done. It is your responsibility.
The woman asked, what if you do not want to do it? What if it causes disruption in your life? Or takes you off your course? So what? I said. We do not put our parents in homes. We do not leave parentless children alone in our families. The woman understood about the parents; she had read a lot about the extended-family concept. She also understood about the children, although she thought the family member who was best situated financially and emotionally should be the first to volunteer. Her point was that many of the Black women she knew seemed to get “stuck” doing for others, often to their own detriment.
Her belief was that adults must learn how to take care of themselves. That they should make provisions for emergencies. Based on her personal observations, her assessment was that Black women more often than not allowed family and friends to emotionally blackmail them into doing what they should do for themselves but were too irresponsible to do. I was beginning to get upset with this woman, but I was also listening.
A woman she worked with had been offered a promotion and a substantial raise to take a managerial position in another city. This woman had worked very hard for the position and she was good at what she did. She was excited about the prospect of being the first Black woman to head a corporate division. In the end, she did not accept the position. She could not leave her mother and her boyfriend did not want to move. The woman’s mother had assumed custody of three grandchildren, her youngest crack-addicted daughter’s children. The mother depended on her other daughter to pay the child care expenses and to pick the children up from day care every day. Although this new offer was the chance and the job she had dreamed of, she could not leave her aging mother with the responsibility of three young children.
Her boyfriend was a sanitation worker, with ten years of service. He was waiting to be called to work at the Department of Corrections, after which they planned to be married. She had been with the man four years and did not want to leave him. How could she give up a six-figure salary and the chance to do what she dreamed of doing, to help people who were quite capable of taking care of themselves? The only explanation I could offer was O.P.P.
We all know people who have given up their lives or pieces of their lives to the benefit of others. Black women will not return to school for higher education or seek career advancement until the children are grown. They will not leave toxic or abusive relationships because the other person needs them. They give their time, energy, and money to family members or friends who do the same thing, in the same way, and get the same results: no change, no growth, no healing or evolution. Many Black women seem to be addicted to helping and saving others. We do whatever we believe is necessary to make others love us; we keep them dependent on us in order to give our lives meaning. There are times when we are so angry and resentful about what we are doing that we make ourselves sick. We develop diseased conditions which give us an excuse to stop doing the thing we do not want to do but believe is expected of us.
Maria married Joseph because her mother told her she would never make it in this life without a man. It was a well-known fact in the family and among anyone who would listen that the only thing Maria’s father could do for Maria’s mother was satisfy her needs and pay her bills. She was grateful that he had given her three beautiful children, of which Maria was one. But the fact still remained, he was a man. A man is useless unless he has money and an imagination in the bed.
Maria was not sure she believed her mother. None of her girlfriends felt that way. They were in love or wanted to be in love just for the pleasure of it. Some of them made out pretty well. On the other hand, Maria saw quite a few of them heartbroken and sick when a relationship failed to work. She was confused, but she was also twenty-four years old. According to her mother, no one would want her soon. She was getting old. If she started working and making it on her own, the only men she would attract would be freeloaders and gold diggers. As fate would have it, she met Joseph on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday.
Now you must remember the lesson from the Valley of Understanding, “What you draw to you is what you are.” Maria was in conflict. She was confused. She was looking for a husband not because she wanted to get married, but because her mother told her she should be married. When you are lonely, confused, desperately in conflict, and you go out on the prowl, just what do you think you are going to attract? That’s right! Your mirror image! A man who is lonely, confused, and desperately in conflict. Also remember that human nature forces us to chase the symbolic representation. We go after what the thing we want looks like without understanding what it really is beneath the surface. So you know Maria was in trouble, right? So here we go.
Joseph was a tall, aggressive, very handsome man. Like his father, he was well-read but had little formal education. He had completed the tenth grade. Like his older brother, he had worked for many years as a servant/chauffeur in the home of a very wealthy family. He saw what it meant to live in wealth and he was determined to live that way. His father and brother told him he was crazy. He would never make it to the top in the “white man’s world.” He was almost convinced, but then he met Maria.
Maria was beautiful and well-educated. She seemed to have it all together. When his employer was out of town, he would take Maria to the house and entertain her. As a matter of fact, the first time they made love it was in his employer’s house. In his employer’s king-size bed. Joseph told Maria he was a stockbroker. He took her to all of the private clubs and establishments to which he chauffeured his employer. Of course everyone knew him. Maria was impressed. When Maria took Joseph home to meet her parents, he had all the right answers to all the right questions. The fact that he gave Maria’s mother a crystal vase, which he had told his employer was broken, only helped him get his foot in the door. Maria liked Joseph, but she was not sure. She sensed that Joe was not being completely honest. He never did what he said he would do when he said he would, but at some point, he always did what he said he would. Maria’s mother kept telling her, “This is too good to be true! This man is too good to be true! A man who wants you to stay home and look pretty. A man who has the means to provide you with the opportunity to live in luxury.” Maria kept saying she was not sure or ready. Her mother told her to get ready because she was ordering the wedding cake.
Joseph’s employer helped him secure the country club so he and Maria could get married. He also gave them the use of his villa in Hawaii as a wedding present. On the day before the wedding, Maria had a panic attack and needed to talk to Joe. She drove herself to his house, the house he worked in, and found him polishing the Benz. He tried to make up a good story. He almost succeeded, but when his employer came running out of the house to tell Joseph there was an emergency at the office, Maria came face-to-face with Joe’s lie, her own confusion, and her mother’s face.
Your back is up against the wall. Your greatest fear is upon you. Everything you have been told you wanted, hoped for, wished for, has just crumbled around your feet. Your mind is racing. Your heart is pounding. When you close your eyes, you see little white spots floating around. You think you are going to faint but you are too damned mad! What do you do? Do you start swinging? Do you run? Hide? Break down and cry? Maria did not know what to do. She knew only one thing, she could not, would not, tell her mother! She would marry Joe and make the best of it.
For the first few years, they did pretty well. They told Maria’s mother that Joe had decided to sell the house and invest the money. They bought a very nice house in a well-to-do neighborhood, on Maria’s credit, with a good word here and there from Joe’s employer. Then, they invented even more stories to save Joe’s ego and ward off Maria’s mother. Maria had to sneak off at night to work in order to keep the house going. Joe kept “breaking” things at work so he would have them to give to his mother-in-law. When either of their families came over, they played the game very well. When the “where are my grandchildren” questions started, they quickly had two children, and then all hell broke loose.
Almost overnight, Maria realized she could not stand the sight of Joseph. She tried to talk to her sister about it, but she was in a similar situation. She had married the man her mother thought was right for her too. She reminded Maria that her mother would “simply die” if she knew the truth. To her it would mean that her daughters had failed and that she had failed as a mother. When she tried to raise the topic of separation with her mother, she would rant and rave about how ungrateful and stupid Maria was acting. Joseph went to the other extreme. He begged and pleaded with Maria. He promised to do anything she wanted as long as she did not leave him. He told her he would die without her. Maria was caught in the middle of O.P.P., with what seemed no way out.
It had started out as a bad day. Her mother had called at 7:00 A.M. wanting Maria to convince Joseph to give her a trip to Hawaii as a Mother’s Day gift. Joseph had come into her bed, trying to force himself on her. The baby was teething and running a fever and had not gone to sleep until 4:00 A.M. Then, at 4:30 in the afternoon, Joseph called. He was in jail. Joseph and his brother had been arrested for armed robbery and attempted murder. His bail was set at fifty thousand dollars. Maria was to go to his employer and ask for the cash.
She was in the car, backing out of the garage, when the voice screamed in her head, “STOP! This is not your issue!” Obediently, Maria jammed on the brakes. She put her head on the steering wheel and cried a four-year cry. She cried because she was married to a man she did not love. She cried because she was afraid of her mother. Then she cried because she was on her way to ask a stranger for fifty thousand dollars to bail her husband out of jail. Finally, she cried because she was miserable, confused, and about to break under the pressure of O.P.P. She cried because she didn’t have the time or courage to really break down.
She got the money. Joe got out of jail. They hired a lawyer. Joe stayed out of jail. He was placed on probation for seven years. About a year later, Joe and his brother successfully pulled off a robbery. He quit his job because he and his brother had more than enough money to start their business. Maria knew what it was, although she and Joe never talked about it. She simply took the money he gave her, lavished it on her children, herself, and her mother, and kept her mouth shut. She was quiet until Joe brought his business and his business associates into their home. Maria told him she would not have it. He told her to take the children shopping and shut her mouth. She and her mother took the children to Spain to buy some shoes.
Three years can whiz by so fast that you wonder how you failed to notice your life is not at all what you hoped it would be. On the other hand, it can seem like an eternity when you are miserable. Maria teetered between those two states of consciousness. She felt that she could not leave, yet she knew she had to go. She thought about what would happen if she left, what her mother would say, what Joseph would do. She knew it would not be pretty, nor would it be easy. She was afraid to go. She was afraid of what would happen if she did not go. Back and forth in her mind. Up and down with the women she knew. Around and around with Joe. Maria was trapped. Joe needed her. The children needed him. Her mother browbeat her. She leaned on her mother. It was a vicious case of O.P.P.
Where do other people end and we begin in our lives? It is a challenge we must all overcome, figuring out what we want from what we have been told we can have. I believe Black women expect less for themselves and from themselves than women of other persuasions. We are taught it is our responsibility to give of ourselves to benefit everyone else, without complaint. We are trapped in a vicious cycle of being everything to everyone except ourselves. We give and give until we have no more to give. When we run out of things to give, we go out and find something else. We are expected to do what other people cannot conceive of doing. If we do not measure up, we beat up on ourselves and allow others to beat up on us. We sacrifice to the point of suffering because we do not know the law.
When we are not sacrificing ourselves to the point of suffering, we sacrifice ourselves in order to avoid perceived suffering. The first principle of the Law of Sacrifice is:
Something always has to be sacrificed in order to gain something else.
Everything in life has a price. In order to have what we want, we must give up something we have. In order to have good health, we must give up heavy, greasy foods. In order to have good friends, we must stop people pleasing and allowing people to have their way with us. To obtain and maintain peace, we must sacrifice the need to be in control and be right. The key to working this particular law in your favor is to understand what you will be required to give up and what you want to obtain.
It is not necessary that we lose our self-value or self-worth in order to have the “finer things” in life. We are not required to sacrifice our own thoughts, feelings, ideals, needs, and desires in order to support others in fulfilling their needs and desires. Never are we expected by the universe of life to sacrifice who we are or what we want to mimic others or to have what they say we “should” have. Success is not one-size-fits-all! No one can tell you how to secure your blessing or your success. When, however, we are unable to separate ourselves from the perceptions, priorities, and problems of other people, we unconsciously sacrifice who we are to what we see and what we are told.
Beverly spent her teenage and young adult life reading, listening to, and following the dictates of the cultural nationalist and revolutionary theory of several organizations and leaders. As a Black woman, she felt it was her duty to always put the needs of “her people” and “community” ahead of her own. She was never quite sure how to do it, but she had enough theory and dogma to live up to. Beverly truly believed poverty was the honest way of the revolutionary. According to the party line, she believed that it was her duty to spend her money in the community, obtain any service from a community-based business, and contribute all of her time and energy to those people and organizations which looked like her. Beverly went so far as to spend seven years in school, incurring a forty-seven-thousand-dollar debt to obtain a law degree in order to “serve her people.” The fact that she did not want to practice law did not matter. But the fact that her clients were indigent, that her loan was in arrears, and that she felt like her life was being wasted eventually overshadowed the revolutionary indoctrination.
Beverly moved ahead, but not too far away. When she changed careers, she saw to it that everyone who represented her came from the community. All of her sales agents were Black. The suppliers she used were Black. Everything she did was focused on the needs and availability of someone in the community, until she became dissatisfied with the quality of their services. She grew tired of the work she ordered not being delivered on time. She was disappointed that her workers were often late or did not show up at all. She was suspicious that she was not being respected because she was Black and a woman. Overshadowing it all was Beverly’s fear of being called a “sellout.” To avoid that, she sacrificed her needs and the quality of her work for the party line.
The deeper you go into the realms of your spirit, the clearer the picture of your life becomes. How do you stay Black, live Black, and buy Black and still meet the standards you have set for yourself? It can be quite a dilemma. In my own very similar situation, I had to pray. Eventually, spirit brought me the answer: “The issue is not Black, the issue is freedom. You have the right and the ability to choose what you want. What are your standards? What color are they? If you can secure the standards you want and still honor your commitment to the community, that is fine. If, however, you reach a point where one must be sacrificed for the other, you are always free to choose.” It made sense but it was not good enough. I would not believe I could not get the quality I desired in my own community, from “my own people.” The next answer I received was this: “You can. The two are not mutually exclusive. The squeaky wheel, however, gets the oil. Those who speak the loudest, make the most noise, are the ones who attract your attention. Rather than sacrificing your standards to what you see as being available, call forth what you need and want from a place of peace and assurance in your own being.”
Today, my literary agent is a Black woman. My attorney is a Black man. I have two publishers, one a larger predominantly white-owned corporation, the other a small African-American-run press. I have two editors: one is a Black female, the other is not. My personal agent is a white female. In each instance, I have chosen the person who can provide the quality of service and support I need which enables me to further my work on all levels. What I eventually figured out was that I, like Beverly, had been stuck in O.P.P., what other people expected of me and said l should do. When I called forth what I needed—people of a like mind—the quality of work I desired and the support I needed took precedence over their color. I am receiving those things which keep me peaceful and I am still “serving my people.”
Very often when we want to avoid something, we sacrifice ourselves to the other extreme. To avoid poverty, we sacrifice our time to work. To avoid loneliness, we sacrifice ourselves with people who neither respect nor value us. To avoid criticism, we sacrifice ourselves by doing what our major critic says we should do. We give up our freedom to consciously choose for ourselves in order to avoid what we believe will be an unpleasurable experience. Self-abandonment, self-denial, and the failure to consult your own inner authority before making a decision or choice have nothing to do with the true meaning of sacrifice. It is O.P.P. which we have unwittingly embraced as our own stuff.
The second principle of the Law of Sacrifice states:
Give of thyself only that which nourishes thyself and prepares thee to share nourishment with others.
According to the law, sacrifice means that we be willing to give and do what we can, when we can, to improve our lot in life. For Black women, this means having the willingness to give up the mundane, unnecessary, and mediocre elements of our lives to pursue excellence for ourselves. Excellence means, giving one hundred percent of your time, attention, and energy to those activities which nourish and enlighten you.
When you are fully capable of taking care of yourself, you are prepared, and must be willing, to share what you have with others. Black women have been taught that sacrifice means totally giving up yourself for the benefit of someone else. The most obvious purpose behind the erroneous teaching is that if we expect nothing for or from ourselves, we will have more to give to everyone else. The results have been devastating on the minds and bodies of Black women. We give to the point of hypertension, stroke, breast cancer, uterine cancer, or until our heart attacks us.
I watched my grandmother sacrifice herself for her family. She worked from sunup to sundown, first in her “Madam’s” house and then at home. I am not sure I ever said thank you to her. I would bet no one else did either. We expected her to do it, we depended on her to do it. I watched my mother sacrifice herself for my father, my brother, and myself. I never realized what it took from her until I became a mother and a wife. Each day, I become acquainted with sisters who cannot tell me what they want for themselves, while they are able to articulate, with exacting clarity, that which they want for their children, their community, and the world. It is O.P.P. at its finest hour.
If there were a slogan which could be used for the social indoctrination of Black women, it should be: “God first. I am next. Everyone else take a ticket and get in line.” Only when we internalize and memorize this slogan can we forget everything we have ever been told about ourselves and follow our heart’s desire. The things we want in our heart are the things God wants for us. It is our duty to pursue our dreams. Even if we fall down in the process, we owe it to the spirit within us to move ahead at our own pace without interference from anyone else.
We cannot ignore our political reality. We cannot float through life in a state of meditative bliss. There are certain realities and issues which are as real as we are. What Black women can do is take the time to honor ourselves, to give to ourselves, as we are learning to trust ourselves. We must dig deep into the essence of our being, pull up the wisdom and the courage which are buried there, and at appropriate times, in an appropriate manner, enable ourselves and be willing to say, “No! That is not my issue!”
Our great-great-grandmothers were wounded. They were slaves, property, chattel; denied the basic right to think for themselves. They were mentally, emotionally, and spiritually wounded by O.P.P. They passed their wounded images and ideas on to our great-grandmothers, who passed them on to our grandmothers, who passed them on to our mothers, who passed them on to us. We are today the walking wounds of our foremothers, sacrificing our lives to the ancient images other people held of our ancestors. Are we tired of sacrificing ourselves? Are we tired of dying unfulfilled?
I believe the universe is tired of receiving the worn-out, lifeless bodies of Black women. In response, life has created the Valley of O.P.P. to teach us how to differentiate our issues from those which have nothing to do with us. We cannot live up to, help, or save anyone until we can live up to the standards we set for ourselves, in order to elevate ourselves and save ourselves. In order to do this, we must understand and appreciate the value of freedom and honesty.
Terri Cole Whittaker wrote a book entitled What You Think of Me Is None of My Business, which should be required reading for the descendants of African women born in America. This book, in great, painstaking detail, describes how the average person becomes enslaved to the problems, principles, and often, whims of other people in their lives. It warns about people pleasing, as well as clarifying how the need to be needed, the need to be wanted, carries us into the zone of self-loss and self-denial. For Black women, in addition to the common pitfalls, there is also the unconscious, often unrecognized need to suffer. We suffer at the hands of others to whom we give free rein and the right to control our lives.
Black women straighten their hair because we are told, probably by someone who is not Black, that our hair should be straight. Although this defies everything we are or hope to be, we do it to the tune of six billion dollars every year. O.P.P.! The things other people tell us and impose on us are bad enough. Complicating matters even further are the things we tell ourselves about the things other people tell us: “If I don’t do this, they will . . .” “If I’m not like this, they might . . .” In the end, we get confused and embroiled in inner turmoil. Few of us realize we have the divine right to choose what to believe and what to do. Most of us have not mastered the self-empowering virtue of honesty.
We are not born to live in turmoil, struggling to make a way out, only to have dirt thrown in our faces before we can realize a state of accomplishment. We are born to live in peace and freedom, giving and receiving, loving and being loved. You might ask, “So what goes wrong?” Lessons. In our peaceful, loving freedom, we must learn lessons which will eventually make us stronger, wiser, and better people. Lessons, not life, create turmoil. We struggle to get what we want, while resisting what we need to learn. We fall from grace in life when we resist and rebel against our lessons. Life is a consistent, orderly flow of events, which will carry us to a desired outcome when we learn how to work through our lessons and ultimately to avoid their pitfalls by accepting them. People create turmoil in their own lives when they accept the issues of others and when they rebel against the natural order and the flow of life.
If you go into a restaurant and sit quietly at a table, you may never be served. You know there are people available to cook what you want and others who will serve you. You also know if you just sit there and do not open your mouth, you will not eat. Knowing we can do a thing is not enough. We must realize we are free to choose. This is the lesson we must learn through the experiences which take us into the valley of O.P.P. Allow your inner authority to guide you. That guidance gives you the freedom to do what you know you must do. Or else, you must suffer the consequences.
Once we give ourselves over to what we can or cannot do based on the expectations of others, we are no longer free. When our vision is restricted to outer appearances, we are enslaved to the way things appear to be. The physical evidence of life is the truth working its way out. We must be willing to get to the bottom, patiently waiting for the truth to reveal itself. When we seek authority from within ourselves, we act on what we know from the core of our being. We are not talking here about moving through life doing whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. We are talking about taking care of your needs, doing what feels right for you, exercising your divine right to choose for yourself the course and direction of your life. Other people may not like it. So what! They will get over it! If they choose not to, if they become angry or upset with you, it is not your issue! O.P.P. is a given in life. It is given to us, but we do not have to accept it.
Nina Simone sang a song which could be the theme song of the valley of O.P.P., “Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But My Own”: “If I die today and go straight to hell, ain’t nobody’s fault but my own.” If we live in the hell of poverty, ill-health, toxic relationships, professional or personal unhappiness, chaos or confusion, we have no one to blame but ourselves. The law says, “What you draw to you, is what you are!” Look at what is going on in your life. Like it? Who is responsible for it being there? The thing we think is our life preserver usually turns out to be a shark. That’s the law working to show us where we are.
When we are under the spell of O.P.P., we may feel like victims. As victims, we do not pay attention to our behavior patterns. We sacrifice ourselves to conditioned responses which take us to the experiences we believe are safe or give us what we want. Very often, the experiences are not safe at all. They may provide temporary relief; however, as long as the core issue remains the same, the outcome will be the same. As long as we are not aware of our patterns, we cannot understand how or why the unwanted experiences continue. Any psychologist worth the name will tell you that if you are experiencing the same or similar events in life, you must get to the core. I am not a psychologist, so I will approach it from a different perspective—a spiritual perspective.
Maria was bullied by her mother. In an attempt to escape, she ran to Joseph. This was definitely a Spiritual Special Education experience which took Maria into a dungeon. You cannot support others in wrongdoings! No matter what your reason, rationale, or excuse, you owe it to the universe and your own personal integrity to remove yourself from the evil doings of others. Many human beings have a need to impress other human beings. To do so, they will tell little white lies. However, when we discover that what we thought was a harmless little story is actually a giant, man-eating shark, we owe it to ourselves to extricate ourselves from all parts of it.
Let us call a spade a spade. A man who tells you he works one place when he does not is one thing. A man who leads you to believe he is something he is not is another thing. A man who tells you a home is his home, a bed is his bed, a life is his life, when they are not, is not a man you want to marry! It does not matter what your mother or anyone else thinks or wants — do not under any circumstances involve yourself with a person you know is actively violating someone’s trust. If your mother is that attracted to the things money can buy, let her marry him. That was Maria’s first mistake: she married a man she knew was dishonest.
Maria had many opportunities to leave Joseph. She really didn’t need a special opportunity. Maria failed to choose what she wanted and to make a decision about how to get it. She was caught up in appearances and people pleasing. She never even tried to fix Joseph. She accepted him just as he was, knowing he was not what she wanted. Fear of what her mother would do; too much concern for what would happen to Joseph; failure to acknowledge her own needs; dishonesty, deceit, and self denial; surrender of her personal freedom; failure to acknowledge her inner voice; fear, threats, and intimidation; talking to the wrong people—what it all boiled down to was Maria selling her soul to the devil of O.P.P. In her case, it was more like a demon.
Joseph did not love her. He loved what she represented—which by the way is also true when we turn the table, Maria to Joseph. The fact that he turned out to be a criminal is not the issue. The only issue which confronted Maria from the very beginning was her willing surrender of her will to her mother’s will. She did eventually leave him. Then she went back. Then she left again. She went back and forth for six more years. When her mother found out what was really going on, she gave Maria hell for being so stupid. She told her to clean out the bank account and get the hell away from him. Maria did it. She moved to the outskirts of the city. One day when she was in town visiting her mother, Joseph saw her. He followed her home. When he knocked on the door, she let him in. When I last heard from Maria, Joe was still in jail. He is doing fifteen to twenty-five years. Maria visits him once or twice a month. She is still confused. Still miserable. Still trying to figure out how to escape the clutches of O.P.P.
Some of us do not make it. As a matter of fact, millions have not made it. I wish I could tell you that spiritual laws and principles work for everyone. That would be dishonest. The key is, you must be open to them and willing to accept them into your life. Some of us are open and willing. Many of us do not have a clue. The manner in which the social constructs and gender roles operate in the lives of women is a function of O.P.P. We are almost expected to do certain things in order to have other things. It is a given that we must sacrifice some part of ourselves to get what we want. The issue is, what part do we sacrifice and under what conditions? What is the honorable margin of return? We live in a society where property ownership determines economic status, which in turn determines social mobility and the degree of social acceptance you will enjoy. This is the operation of O.P.P. The requirements of property ownership restrict the independent mobility and economic viability of women, who were, until eighty-seven years ago, themselves considered the property of men. This, too, is a function of O.P.P.
SPIRIT GETS MY VOTE!
I am often asked how spirituality or spiritual empowerment provides one with the necessary tools to address the issues of the political reality. How can prayer, breathing, meditation, honoring the ancestors, all of the practices we consider spiritual, help anyone overcome the reality of racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, social injustice? How can you fight hate and political disenfranchisement with a crystal or a deck of tarot cards? My answer is that spiritual consciousness does not make your problems go away; it does, however, help you to view them from a different vantage point.
Politics and political issues are not living, breathing entities. They are based on mental constructs and the laws of man. Life is based on the laws of God. Life, as it is created by God, operates from the inside to the outside. In the hidden, secret realm of the internal order of God, life is created, formed, and shaped. When life appears in the outside world, it does so to continue its development, not to be created. Politics are based on the way human beings perceive themselves and the world, not the way the world was created by God to be. If we are to successfully redress the constructs of the political environment in which we live, we must each go back to the drawing board. We must begin within ourselves, developing a clear understanding of our ability to create what we want, rather than being locked in an endless battle with O.P.P.
Growing up as a poor Black female in the 1950s, the political reality of my family as well as the world was extremely limited as it applied to me. When I was three years old, I could not ride in the front of a bus or drink water from certain fountains, nor could my grandparents or parents vote in their hometown of Smithfield, Virginia. It was a very vague possibility that I would ever go to college or earn a law degree or own property or be able, if I so chose, to marry a white man or a Black woman, in full public view, without fear of being burned at the stake. In 1953, that was my political reality, the facts as they existed at that time. Facts are subject to change. Truth is not. O.P.P. are transitory facts. Spirituality examines and reveals the truth of your being.
When I was in an abusive marriage, my political reality was a very angry, six-foot-two-inch, 240-pound husband who could, and did, break various parts of my face with one blow of his fist. It was a fact that on numerous occasions, he broke several of my ribs, blackened one or both of my eyes, choked me into unconsciousness, and threatened to kill me if I left him. My experience was real. At that time, I saw nothing spiritual about it. Ultimately, my reality was not changed by the spiritual transformation of my husband’s mind. It changed when I began to realize that the only way he could continue to beat me was if I stayed with him. And that whether I died trying to get away from him or died because he beat me to death if I stayed did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that I decided I was not going to get beat by him or anyone else ever again. I was willing to die rather than live with abuse. I made my desire to get away from him more powerful than his threats which had kept me in fear for nine years.
Racism and sexism in and of themselves are not what limit Black women in America. It is our perception of them and how they can or will operate against us that gives them so much power over us. Your political reality is determined by your personal reality. How you see things determines what you believe you can do. The political realities which operate to limit Black women are not nearly as powerful as our fear of them, belief in them, and reliance on their operation as an excuse to operate within the status quo. When Black women are taught to be the thing we desire, rather than to seek external authorization and approval to have what we desire, O.P.P. will lose ground in our minds.
If you want peace, be peace. If you want wealth, be wealth. Think it. Talk it. Prepare yourself to have it. When we become faithful enough to seek guidance and authority from within ourselves, being obedient to the voice of the Creator’s spirit as it speaks to our hearts, we will rise above O.P.P. and the politically factual constructs it uses to keep us in bondage. Whether our political reality is passed on to us by our parents, reinforced by an economic reality, or thrust upon us by others as the circumstances and conditions of our lives, O.P.P. cannot survive in the presence of a made-up mind, a faith-filled heart, and a trusting reliance on the power of spirit.
Some of us are born to be active warriors and revolutionaries. Others are born to be teachers, healers, helpers, and servers. Not all of us will march in the picket lines, rally folks to go to the polls, or boldly go where we have been forbidden to tread. Some of us must stay home, in the background, to do the praying, crying, healing, and teaching it will take to move us all forward. A spiritual consciousness will not only move us beyond the limits of O.P.P. as a political reality, it will help us each identify what it is we have come to do, so that it will all get done and we will not be in each other’s way. O.P.P. keeps us all stagnated. Spiritual empowerment deploys divine legions of spiritually empowered soldiers to their and to our divine destinations, with the clarity of vision, exactness of mission, and freedom to create whatever is needed at any point in time.
MEDITATION WITH THE MOTHER
—YORUBA PROVERB
When you hate, you become that which you hate. When you struggle, you become that which you struggle against. When you protest, you take on the very qualities of the thing against which you protest. How else would you know so well the intricacies of that which you despise?
Dear daughters, the Father has given everyone something they must grapple with and resolve in order to become whole. There is healthy conflict and unhealthy struggle. How you are impacted is determined by whether you have healthy or unhealthy thoughts and desires. Healthy conflict pushes you beyond your self-inflicted limitations, causing you to reach, to stretch, and in moments of need, to ask for divine intervention or guidance. Unhealthy conflict is that which causes you to push, shove, demand, struggle, and ultimately, hate when you do not get what you want.
It is the Father’s pleasure to give you the goodness, peace, and joy you seek, when it is based on healthy desires. When you grapple with life’s difficulties, seeking divine guidance in pursuit of healthy pleasure, the Father and I delight in your victories. When, however, you set your sights on things which push you further away from that which is divine and deeper into a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, it is then that healthy grappling becomes unhealthy struggle. You look outside of yourself away from the divine, for solutions and resolutions which cannot redeem your sense of self. There is nothing beyond you which will enable you to reach a state of grace-filled peace. From an external perspective, your healthy human dilemmas become soul-disruptive struggles which lead you to hate the very thing which has been divinely ordained to help you grow.
Dear daughters, do not believe you are being punished or that you have been forgotten by me when you are grappling with the mysteries of life. You are here, in this form, at this time, to bring forth blossoms of beauty which are buried in your heart. Do not become dismayed when you miss an opportunity, misunderstand a direction, or are delayed in receiving rewards. All that has been ordained for you awaits you. Rest assured that a day of sorrow is but a moment in the divine plan for your life.