@myself, please forgive me.
* This is a book revelation of Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown and Parable of the Brown Girl by Khristi Lauren Adams. It is comprised of my own thoughts and personal connotations. My book revelations and reviews are not designed to solely sway your personal views, but to always encourage others to read more to form their own opinion.
As I hear Recipe by Sir fade into the background, “let it go, let it go, let it go”, I think about how much unresolved pain I’ve harbored along with all of the remarkable achievements I’ve glossed over. The past few months I have had the luxury to discover some hidden stories about brown girls, just like me, whose insecurities, missteps, and unfortunate circumstances eclipsed their light. To say that I resonated with these stories is evident, but what comes along with being a Black girl is a concept for everyone to grasp. This book revelation is going to take the time to recognize two books, Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown and Parable of the Brown Girl by Khristi Lauren Adams, that bring voice to the true stories of Black girls.
It’s funny when people ask, “what is one piece of advice you would tell your five year old self?”, as if the person I am is not her. As if that girl still isn’t standing up strong some days and burying her head on others. As if that girl didn’t aspire to things and embarrassingly fail, too. As if she died off when she celebrated her 6th birthday. No, that girl is still here wrapped in 20 years of layers. Yes, there are so many things that I want to tell her - to tell me, I have grown and I still deserve nurturing. Not in the sense that I am an adolescent but as a human being that has endured things that is worthy of being shown compassion, empathy, and guidance (this diabolical lack in humanity in general is an excerpt for another day). While reading the compilation of short stories within the Parable of the Brown Girl, these girls were of different ages but all minors. The common theme of each girl’s story was an expectation that they set within themselves, along with the gracious hands of society, to see themselves as someone much older and capable of enduring painful experiences unscathed. Honestly, I would tell my five year old self so much to prevent her from making mistakes or seeing herself as unqualified but what comes after that? A new misstep to prevent and a new insecurity to overcome. I cannot erase anything and make it perfect, but I would tell my 5 year old self the same thing I tell my 25 year old self - Please Forgive Me.
Lord knows I probably have a journal entry every three months or so declaring forgiveness, because as the perfectly flawed black girl I am - I make mistakes, and that is perfectly okay. The dopest part about making mistakes is the redemption process, the one that reveals your magic. We, including myself, have the tendency to forget the magic that oozes from our pores and our minds and our hearts. Echo Brown used magical realism in Black Girl Unlimited to tell her compelling story about the power she seen in the women around her and how it forced an abundance of her own magic to come out when it was all that she had left. The story alone is one where you can vividly see the overlap of Brown girl experiences, and how it shapes the relationship we have with others and ourselves. As I unraveled the 20 years of layers to get to the 5 year old version of myself I stumbled upon magical spaces that in real time I saw as regular. One in particular is being a first generation college graduate, I never celebrated it for the achievement that it was, and how difficult life was those four years. Managing a 3.0 average GPA for my academic scholarship while juggling an extremely unhealthy relationship, and working two or three jobs at once just to afford a pack of ramen, rent, and gas for my car (which was my first car that I didn’t get until my last year of undergrad). That dedication to graduating had to be nothing but pure magic hahaha, because still to this day I don’t know how I did it!
The process looks a lot like: Revisit, Forgive, Find Magic. Repeat. I ask you to take those steps as often as you need to, we all know forgiveness doesn’t happen over night but we do have to start somewhere. Why are you harboring what hurts? Why aren’t you celebrating what worked?