Ancient Egyptian Proverb: "Do not separate your mind from your tongue." Listen, there was a time when I did not know what words to use to t
Ancient Egyptian Proverb: “Do not separate your mind from your tongue.”
Listen, there was a time when I did not know what words to use to tell the adults what others had been doing to me. I was an abused, harmed, and violated CHILD (teen, which is a child even if you are a Black girl).
I wanted words that meant: “things are being done to me and I want y’all to know that I don’t like it and it ain’t my fault and I’m sorry I lied because they made me. And oh yeah, I am in a lot of pain.”
Statistics tell us that there are about 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys harmed sexually by the age of 18. We have long believed that these numbers are conservative. We haven’t been able to find a cure, solution, vaccine, tonic…nothing to help these numbers go down. It has not improved.
Where there are people, there will be harm against children. Damn sin and a shame!
So, PLEASE…stop saying …..words like…..
“He f*** kids” or any other after dark adult variance.
Put some respect on these babies. Respect children.
Survivor Story
In 1984, Ted Danson, Glenn Close, Olivia Cole, and Roxanne Zal were in a television movie called, “Something About Amelia”. It gave me the words and the process-the steps to take- that I needed to come forward.
Seeing Ted Danson play against type as a father who molested his oldest daughter.
Roxanne Zal, who I had seen in “All in the Family” play the girl who was harmed in what seemed to others like a normal family.
Now, to this day, I despise how the movie ends but the actors did an excellent job. Intense. Life-like.
Genius casting. Genius use of “show don’t tell”, especially with Ted Danson who was seen as congenial by most of the country.
Now he was playing a child molester.
Then there was Glenn Close, playing the mother who seemed to struggle to have empathy for her daughter.
Still, the point is, there are children who are struggling with their own secrets and perhaps their friends’ secrets.
I was going through the motions as a “normalish” child. Going to school, playing after school, dancing, acting, & singing in stage plays, listening to New Edition, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J on cassette tapes on my boom box, and going to sleep overs where no girl got any sleep.
But for years I was holding and shielding a lot of secrets that I did not have the vocabulary for.
The children are watching. They are watching how we speak. (I’ve shared that I have experience working & volunteering on crisis hotlines. They ARE listening to the adults when they want to.)
Please mature your words.
We are not in a nightclub.
We are in the company of the most precious.
We are in the company of children.
Watch your words. Guard your tongue. May it follow your heart.
Put some respect on these babies. Respect children.
“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence;
does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”
Toni Morrison
Words like ‘child molester’ and ‘rapist’ are right there.
If the platforms that you use don’t allow these words but allow you to say “f*** kids”, why is that?
Have the courage to push back on that.
….for the sake of the children.