sistaspeak
today is my godsister’s 30th birthday. one of the activities in her weeklong b-day celebration was a viewing of oprah’s legends ball at her house tonight. i wanted to come home and blog about all of the emotions that i experienced watching this program….and how as women of different ages (from my mom’s generation and mine) sat in my sister’s living room and laughed and cried (well, more like broke down sobbing) together, in that moment we all felt connected in a way that we never have before….but i can’t.
i tried to take notes in my mind of all the bloggable moments that i saw - mary j. breaking down, coretta and dorothy in one of their last public gatherings, the sunday impromptu gospel pass the mic, the “i speak your name” poem, oprah’s cornrows, the close-up of ashanti looking like “God, please please please don’t let anybody pass me the mic” during the gospel adlib (yeah i’m hatin’ on her, y’all know i still question why ashanti was invited and i wasn’t), the EARRINGS!!!, and most importantly….a large group of black women - not cursing each other out, rolling their necks, mean mugging for no reason, backstabbing, maliciously slandering, or trying to generally outdo one another in order to boost our own egos and kill each others’ spirits, but HONORING each other for just being who they were…. God’s most wonderful creations.
in that one hour, i felt validated and rejuvenated in my pride in the intangible essence of black women. it’s an hour of footage that when lil’ beloved goes thru her rites of passage/woman’s day one day, she will have to witness with her own eyes the same way that i did…so that she can understand the beauty and the power that is “us”. when i got home, i ran upstairs to write…but here i sit in front of my computer at a loss. have you ever seen something so beautiful and so powerful that there are absolutely no words to describe it’s magnificence? that’s how i feel right now. goodnight.
