We grew up exposed, witnessing and experiencing things we were too young to adequately process, without protection and defense, vulnerable and on display. We watched our women, your women, our mothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins, endure hardship after hardship with stern and steady faces. We saw our Grandmothers, your Grandmothers, on bending knee, daily, praying for our families' deliverance and holding on to faith when all that abound was captivity and despair. We kept weary eyes on our mothers, your mothers, as they balanced life strained by stress, weighed by pressures, and silently suffering from untreated traumas. We loved you, our brothers, like second mothers, sacrificing for you, carrying a hope in our bellies and a fear in our chests for you, wanting you to succeed and beat every obstacle we knew would be in your path. And, we still had enough courage to love. We endured loss after loss, and we still had enough gumption risk ourselves.
And your frustration is that we were hardened in that process? Hell yeah, we are harder. We were absolutely toughened, and many of us are still processing those experiences and the hurt and anger that accompanied them.
How is that you, our men, our black men---our fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, husbands, and partners---lack so much understanding and compassion for our experience? You witnessed, firsthand, the cyclical disappointments that shaped our countenance. They were, afterall, the same experiences and disappointments that shaped you, for better and for worst.
