Talking to my tribe today on more then one occasion within that day I found myself having conversations around the word JOY. It was serendipitous that this 3 letter word was on the minds of those around me, because I was truly feeling it and actively manifesting it everyday. Feeling joy can be tantamount to our self care and also self identity especially for the community I identify with (queer, black, kinky and polyamorous) To be a minority, within a minority, within a minority (yeah imagine how I feel…ha!) the small victories that affirm and validate who you are can be the single most exuberant experience of your life. But alas that doesn’t happen everyday, so how do we cultivate, multiply and share our JOY?
With so many legitimate reasons for Black women to feel despair about the world, sharing light moments is a distinctive, even radical choice — and it may be why “Black joy” has resonated with so many.
Ayana Lage – What Black Joy Means to 7 Black Women
In this day and age of division, divisiveness and all around bad news it can seem almost impossible to create and foster the ability to see joy in life’s everyday trial and tribulations. Which is why I enjoyed this article from Bustle about how black women viewed JOY and what it meant to them in their personal experiences. How do you experience or foster joy? This was a question that I asked myself after reading this article. There were things that I could relate to reading the perspectives of each of the women from religion, family and even celebrating successes but there was something that for me was very personal in searching my own soul.
My wife loves to watch reality TV, haha. She is kind of addicted to it. I don’t really care for it, but I will now and again indulge with her and try to follow the ever more dramatic story lines from shows like “Love and Hip Hop”, “Real Housewives” and “Braxton Family Values”. Aside from being at minimum a guilty pleasure, it also gives the viewers a inside vision of what relationships between black women can be. The (mostly) good, the (sometimes) bad and the ugly. And through this I realized that we as black women have a horrible track record with our sisters and the manifestation of that is now on display for everyone’s entertainment. Part of Black Girl Magic is finding and fostering Black Joy but how can we do that when our own ties are frayed? Myself personally I have always had good relationships with other women because I had models of that at home. My Mom and aunt were always reaffirming and building each other up, my many Buddhist “mothers in faith” who were the epitome of perseverance, cheer and winning; showed me examples of creating valuable relationships no matter how challenging. But what if you never had those models. How do you learn to ‘be your sister’s keeper’?
As with everything it starts with US! How can I expect to know how to make those that oppress us respect and honor our lives if we cant do it for each other? How can we embrace our natural gifts, talents and skills if we are always looking down at others and their talents that are different then ours? When will be realize that my black girl magic is equal and in proportion to my sister’s black joy? They are not only one and the same but they are contingent on each other. I always loved the phrase “Your vibe attracts your tribe”, yeah I know VERY hippie of me LOL! But this is truth and I experience it everyday! When I make space to rejoice and foster my tribe’s joy my joy in turn is doubled. And that positive vibration continues to reverberate and thereby attracting even more of the same wavelength to crescendo into a tsunami of joy. So imagine if we all did this? Imagine that we are reverberated and multiplied this Black Joy wave to engulf the world not only in a hashtag #blackjoy or #blackgirlmagic but in a seismic shift felt by our culture and our generation. Now THAT is the real MAGICK of a black girl.
