My Mothers Bore Fruit is an excerpt from my book "To Wilt and Bloom." The poem is an ode to my future daughters, written in a time where the meaning of womanhood laid heavily on my mind. The words in the poem resemble the journey of my thoughts as I analyzed the weight of what it means to be a woman and of what could lie ahead in raising daughters in my footsteps. While writing this poem, I thought about the burdens I have carried and the burdens I have witnessed many women before me carry. I questioned how I could create a different experience for my future daughters instead of bringing them into a world of affliction.
Through this photo project, I wanted to create visual intimacy between women. So often, I've witnessed the strain between women who create competition between themselves instead of uplifting each other. In my work, I focus lot on sisterhood and the possibilities of future motherhood. This photo project is one of many created in hopes of visually illustrating my desire to cultivate space and positive energy between women of color.
- Est. 2019
My Mothers Bore Fruit is a journey of coming to terms with my understanding of womanhood while at the same time, healing from the burdens and pains that I have experienced as a woman. It is an untangling of webs and a covering of prayer for women present, women past, and women of the future.
My Mothers Bore Fruit
My fingers weave webs. A sticky, tangled mess of my understanding of what it means to be a woman, of what it means to carry Eve in my palms and to carry my mother in my skin and to one day carry a daughter in my belly. I have been weaving my youth further into age and in doing so, attempting to unravel my frustration from these vines, the aggravation that I experience when I feel as though my emotions are too much to be harbored within these bones. My mother birthed me to be a moon, yet I was not prepared for the eclipses that would take place. My body being sexualized. My forbidden fruit being explored at too young an age. My emotions being suppressed. My identity being shaped at the hands of society.
Existing in the body of a black woman has taken me through many trails. In my times now, I have been practicing coming to terms of peace with my experience with womanhood. The road has not always been easy, but there is more beauty to the journey of getting to know the strength that has been produced from such tribulations. As any woman, we all expect the other to help us understand the stronghold that Eve's biting of the apple has passed down to each generation since.
Every woman since Eve has had the chance to break the chains, or at least soften the hold they have around our wrists. Every woman has had the hopes of not passing down such treachery of life to her daughters. I know that as much as she may have wanted to, my mother couldn't protect me from the snake whose duty was and is to deceive. She could only teach me and hope that I had the discernment to know which fruits not to sink my teeth into. I hope that one day I carry such wisdom to teach the same lesson. I am on a journey now of growing to love and appreciate the brown moon that I am. In doing that, I am learning how to heal my wounds and soften my pain so in the day that i bring a daughter into this world, she won't have to bear the weight of the wars that her mother did not fight. I will teach her that womanhood is beautiful and there is nothing questionable about being a moon. I will teach her to rise and rise and rise again. Until then, I will rise into a woman my own.
Special thanks to my beautiful muses, Kambrea, Brittany, Jada, and Angela.