Recap on Walk for Black Infant Mortality Awareness

These will be my final thoughts on the Walk for Black Infant Mortality Awareness, and my lessons learned from the experience.  First and foremost I want to thank a few folks:
Our walk sponsors:

• Ergo Baby
• Jennie Joseph and the JJ Way
• Home State Health Plans

Other donors who donated to cover walk expenses:

• Andrea Dixon (funds to rent RV)
• shoes for walk (Yolanda Fortin and Tasha Reed)
• Logo and T-shirts (Corey and Racquel Hykes)
• Misfit Wearable Shines (fitness/mileage tracker)

Human Resources:

• Team members who helped plan and execute the walk (Janet and Julie)
• Host families who sheltered us in the storm (and in fair weather)
• Guest walkers who shared part of the time on the road (Rebecca and Marijke)
• Folks who set up speaking gigs, radio, and newspaper interviews (Janet and Elizabeth)
• My Council of Elders who supported this walk (Tasha, Noriah, Rebecca, Bryan and Sharese)
• Uzazi Village staff who held it down while I was away (Mariah and Charlene)
• All those who watched, waited, and read along on the journey
• Those who planned and attended the Improving Birth Rally that kicked off the Walk

End results of the walk:
When all was said and done, I walked 61 miles over six days and raised, $3,720 toward Uzazi Village operations and programming.  Which mean $1,860 for programing (50%), $1,116 (30%) for operations, and $186.00 (5%) each donated to ICTC and National Association of Birth Centers of Color.  The remaining $372 (10%) covered fundraising fees for paypal and causevox.  Thank you to all those who donated to make this fundraiser a success.  From sponsors and other donors we collected $2, 300 to cover walk expenses which included RV rental, food, gas, and motel costs.

My Experience:
The walk was an amazing experience for me.  I walked alone for hours on end for days at a time.  That was a true gift.  I was beautiful beyond words out on the trail and I got to soak it all in.  I'm so grateful to have had that experience.  Someone asked me if I ever felt unsafe alone out on the trail.  I have to admit it took a couple of days to get used to.  City folk like me are used to always having people around and really didn't think the trail would be THAT empty of people.  Now that I've done it and look back on it, I'm really proud of what I accomplished. I challenged myself physically.   I did increase awareness of the issue, and started some dialog both in Missouri and around the nation.  Its just a pittance when so much needs to change.  In order to keep the conversationa and awareness going, I've decided to do the walk again next year, and allow others to walk in thier own states to bring awareness and invite dialog which I hope will lead to action.  Thank you to all of you who supported my efforts and followed my walk.  I will be keeping the walk page open and will reset it for next September so that I can share as the plans for a multi-state walk take shape.  This will be no small task as I enter into a CPM preceptorship and a PhD program.  Your continued prayers and well wishes are most welcomed.

Lessons Learned:

• Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
• The only way things will change will be if we change them.
• Listen to the body and care for its needs.
• Always bring enough to share.
• Fear is in the mind, courage is in the action.

With Friends Like These...

So remember the movie "The Help"?  There's a running joke all through the movie.  The event that the ladies' group was putting on was raising funds to help the 'poor little starving colored children in Africa'- the joke of course being that they were busy throughout the movie, mightily oppressing the 'poor little starving colored children in America' and their parents.

Why do I bring up the situation proposed in that movie?  I often feel stuck in the same kind of scene.  The people in the position to render me a good turn, are often the same people I need to lend the most forbearance.  I call them 'allies'.  I define allies as 'those who do not self-identify as a person of color, but who demonstrate commitment to communities of color and decreasing health disparities within them.'  Notice I use the term 'demonstrate' and not 'talk a good game'.  This is a touchy subject but I feel driven to write about it.  There are days when my 'allies' tax me more than anyone under the sun. Too many allies credit themselves with too much knowledge about my culture, my community, my cause, etc.  Often, very often, they don't know nearly as much as they think they do. 

I'm not saying allies aren't good people, but if they don't maintain humility and a learner's heart, they become quite burdensome to me and to the goals I'm trying to accomplish.  There can be a long learning curve for systemic racism and white privilege.  It can't be assimilated and understood overnight.  Especially since it becomes so intertwined in how we view the world.  It can take a really long time to unpack all that privilege.  In the meantime, you just have to trust me when I ask you to stand down. 

Allies often confuse 'helping' with 'leading'.  I witness this confusion on a daily basis.  Dominant culture women are just not used to following women of color.  It doesn't fit well and feels ackward.  It's one thing to use your privilege to uplift and illuminate a woman of color and her works.  Its quite another to stand down and walk behind her, and support her in that way.  Often allies think their task is 'to come alongside'.  It is not.  Your task is to follow in a supportive role until such time you are invited to 'come alongside'.  You may never be asked to 'come alongside' and if that is the case, you must be content to follow.  "But I'm only trying to help!" is often the distressed cry I receive when I point this out.  "No," I state patiently, "You are only trying to lead- which is what you have been taught to do."

How do allies rid themselves of the 'Saviour Complex' they are enculturated to embrace?  It will take some work.  Recently at Uzazi Village, I did a little social experiment during an event being held at our facility.  Prior to serving the food, I announced that our special guests of honor would go through the buffet first.  I then announced that those special guests were the women of color in attendance.  The dominant culture women stepped aside as the women of color made their way through the food line.  Later in the evening, I invited the dominant culture women to recall another time when they had to 'give way' to a woman of color, because she was a woman of color.  I invite those reading this blog to reflect upon that question as well and share their thoughts.

Why am I bringing this up?  Because my allies are only helpful in proportion to their awareness and humility.  I need my allies to step up and stop being oblivious to their own privilege.  I don't need you to 'come alongside', I need you to be willing to follow.  And please don't come to 'save me'.  I am saving myself.  I might need your help, but I don't need you to take over.  I know this is difficult to hear, because it is difficult to say, but it needs to be said.  I cannot work with so-called allies who do not understand these truths.  You cannot lead in my community- even if no one else has stepped forward to do the work; even if you have looked and can't find woman of color leaders; even if there are no people of color who are qualified (in your opinion); even if, even if, even if.  You cannot lead in my community; you don't know enough, to know what you do not know.

Disparities pimping is a wide spread practice.  Our communities are already preyed upon by well meaning do gooders who support their middle class lifestyles by drawing a paycheck off 'serving' the poor including folks of color.  The poor never get less 'poorer' but the workers manage to maintain their middle class lifestyles. When the grants are dried up, those people and their programs are gone as well.  There is a grave lack of trust of those who encroach on our communities in the name of 'fixing' us.  Please allies be aware and beware.

The fight for health equity needs soldiers, but the general slots are already spoken for.

And so it begins...

I am on the cusp of a journey.  I am not ready, not quite totally prepared, but none-the-less, it will begin. Today begins the 12 day walk I have spent nine months preparing for.  I start on a journey across the Katy Trail between Kansas City MO and St. Louis MO for 175 miles.  I am walking for Black Infant Mortality Awareness.  I walk because I want people to know about a silent epidemic that is occurring right now in our communities around this nation.  Black babies are dying at a rate twice that of their Caucasian peers.  I want us to know better so we can do better for these babies and moms.

As I sit here in my quiet house (everyone sleeping), alone with my thoughts, I am eager for this adventure.  I am worried too that I will be inadequate to the task.  Come what may, I plan to do my part.  There are so many moments I am eager to embrace.  Speaking for the first time at Missouri's only Historic Black College.  I so long to embrace those students and share my stories with them.  I also look forward to the warmth and well wishes of my sister Missouri midwives. I'm looking forward to long days on the trail alone with my thoughts shrouded in pristine beauty of central Missouri.  I'm looking forward to my talk in Columbia MO to a mixed audience of healthcare providers, educators, birthworkers, and birthing women.  I'm even looking forward to my time in Jefferson City talking to legislators about this issue. The talk in St. Louis at the end of the walk is completely humbling to me.  They gave me an auditorium that seats 225 people.  Wow.  I'm excited for the people I'll meet, the conversations I'll have, the lectures I'll give. the new things I learn.

I want everyone to follow this adventure, this journey.  I'll be recording vlogs daily, and writing in this blog whenever I have access to internet.  Thank you to all my many supporters from around the globe and around the nation.  Please make a donation to our work if you have the means.  All prayers and well wishes for my safety are equally valued.  Pray for my internal fortitude, a deepening of my relationship with my creator, that I would have a heart full of gratitude, a head full of wisdom,  and a mouth filled with temperance and forbearance.  Pray that I will be a blessing to those along my path. Pray for strength for my team who will be my strength.

Thank you to those who have made this journey possible, my many supporters near and far, my sponsors,  Ergo Baby, the JJ Way, and Home State Health Plans, and you.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
  ― Ernest Hemingway

Why Black Breastfeeding Week?

 

Why Black Breastfeeding Week Is Important

For many families across the nation, the end of August marks the end to the long lazy bubbly days of summer and a return to regimented schedules and academic pursuits.  It also marks the start of Black Breastfeeding Week- August 25-31. Black Breastfeeding Week was created last year by three African-American breastfeeding advocates; Kimberly Seals Allers, a journalist and author of the Mocha Mom Manuals, Kiddada Green, founder of the Black Mothers Breastfeeding Association, and Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka, co-author of “Free to Breastfeed; Voices of Black Mothers”  These three ‘titans of lactation’ saw the need to celebrate African-American mothers in their choice to breastfeed their babies, and launched a nation-wide promotion.

Black Breastfeeding Week was born with great fanfare, and great backlash. Many demanded to know why Black women should get their own ‘breastfeeding week.’ What many don’t know and understand the dismal  landscape for breastfeeding in the African-American community.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2004–2008, (latest data available) the percentage of women who initiated breastfeeding was74.3%for Whites, 54.4% for Blacks and 80.4% for Latinas. (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5911a2.htm) While the number of women who elect to breastfeed their babies has increased in recent years, the disparity between White mothers and Black mothers still persist.  These numbers indicate a need for greater social, familial and healthcare provider supports, especially for African-American women.

I am an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and a woman of color.  I run a free community-based breastfeeding clinic in the urban core of my city.  I work daily in the trenches with African-American mothers who want to breastfeed their babies but find it difficult to connect with community resources without extraordinary effort on their part. Some women are fortunate to be able to access breastfeeding assistance with relative ease.  Some women have support groups right in their own neighborhoods.    Some women can afford to pay professionals to come to their homes and provide guidance and instruction.  This does not describe the women I work with.  The women I serve, mostly African-American, often live at or below poverty level.  They may be generationally impoverished, or situationally impoverished but one thing is for certain- all this access to breastfeeding help that health care professionals deem imperative to breastfeeding success is not accessible to them.

The women I serve don't have easy access to breastfeeding support groups, except perhaps at their local hospital.  But even those are not without challenges.  The women I work with tell me (because I always ask) that they may go their entire hospital stay without anyone mentioning breastfeeding; that their babies are given bottles of formula without their knowledge or consent; and that nurses actively discourage them from breastfeeding. Among professionals, we call this 'provider bias.'  It is rampant in healthcare.  Physicians, nurses, even IBCLCs don't help because they either a) don't believe African-American women will breastfeed their babies, or they b) don't believe these women will be successful at it. It is also because health care providers may lack proper knowledge about delivering care in a way that is culturally appropriate and acceptable. For example, talking to an African-American woman about breastfeeding without drawing her partner or mother into the conversation could be a problem.  Knowing and understanding who her champions are and engaging them in the process  is vital.

For the brave few new mothers that  garner the courage to venture outside their communities to find help and support they so desperately need,   they may or may not find acceptance waiting for them when they get there.  Last month on the ‘Black Women Do Breastfeed’ Facebook page, an African-American woman shared how she got up the courage to attend a meeting in another community, and while she was there, no one spoke to her or acknowledged her presence.  -I know what you're thinking, that would never happen in “our” neighborhood, right? Perhaps it wouldn't.  -But look around at your breastfeeding support groups.  How diverse are they?  -How comfortable would you feel in a gathering if the racial mix was reversed?

African-American women have yet to find a place for themselves in the breastfeeding landscape.  That's where Black Breastfeeding Week comes in.  We are actively creating a space for ourselves by declaring our own stake in breastfeeding, holding our own private celebration.  The Facebook page and website engages women from around the country all year long with local and national events, updates, and articles, videos and other educational materials.  African-American women can send in their breastfeeding photos and have them posted.  They may not see breastfeeding images of themselves in the media otherwise. How does this week work across the nation? It's imperative to promote breastfeeding in the African-American community so that mothers and babies can share in the many short and long term health benefits.  Black Breastfeeding Week is here to stay to show African-American women that breastfeeding is for them and their babies. Black Breastfeeding Week is important because we need to help all women become successful in meeting their breastfeeding goals and too many of us, have been left out of the picture.

 

 

 

Then I lost me...

This adoption journey has not been what I thought it would be.  In the weeks since meeting my darling Jason, my world has been turned upside down.  Not outwardly.  Outwardly I get on with the business of the day.  But inwardly, there is constant turmoil.  I've discovered all the things people never tell you about reunions.  My emotions betray me daily as I experience the highest highs and the lowest lows. Before this I thought of myself as a fairly reserved, stable, not too emotional person.  Then he came.  Let me say now, that this is about my journey.  It doesn't really have to do with Jason.  He has been wonderful and lovely.  I love the person he is.  It is not because of him that I am going through these things.  It is because of the situation.  Little did I know, that picking up the phone and answering his inquiry would set into motion changes that would leave me questioning everything in my world.  What has changed?  For one thing; how I view adoption.
Adoption is a crap shoot. 
I gave my son up because I bought the party line that he would have a better life.  Well, he didn't.  I thought someone else (anybody else, really) could give him more than I could because society told me I was young, and poor, and basically a piece of shit incapable of giving a baby what it would need.  Well, that was wrong, too.  My baby needed Me and I needed him.  Maybe I didn't have much, but what I had, I would have given him.  So the societal narrative is; "Hey, young stupid girls, don't be so selfish.  Give your babies up to a nice stable married couple.  They'll do a way better job than you ever could raising a baby."  No one ever suggests that your baby could end up in less than ideal circumstances.  I feel as though I've been duped- on a grand scale.  Is adoption just a social experiment to get babies away from their young single mothers and placed with supposedly nice, stable couples? Does society deem me less than and as a lesser mother?  He is my CHILD.  He is MY child. I feel as though I've fallen victim to some cosmic evil scheme.  I feel as though I had an unwritten agreement with God or the universe and it was broken.  I gave my child up- like I was led to believe I should.  I did what society told me was the most loving thing of all- separate myself from my child.  It doesn't feel that way now.
I was not prepared for the emotionality of this.  Up, down, up, down.  I was not prepared for the intensity of this.  Why did I not come across any of this in a book before?  Why have I not heard about it in a support group?  I didn't know that meeting my son, would feel like 'falling in love' only more intense.  I didn't know I would obsess about him, always want to be in his presence, and when I am around him, I didn't know I would not be able to keep my hands off him,  that I would be overwhelmed by my need to smell him, that my arms ache for him.  He is 6'5" and 31 years old, but if I could figure out  way to cuddle him in my arms, I would have done it.  I recognized all of this as 'baby-hunger".  These were all things I would have done when he was a baby.  All the same bonding needs have rushed back as if 31 years have not passed in the interim.  Wow, just wow. 
I've had to figure out ways to help myself through all of this.  I found an online community of birth mothers.  It helps to hear other people's reunion stories.  It helps to ask questions and get answers.  It helps not to feel so all alone. 

Then He Found Me

I was living a fairly busy, complicated, and purposeful life.  Then, on June 17th I received an email that would forever change everything.  It was from the adoption agency.  It was telling me, that after 31 years of waiting, he had found me. 
At the age of 20, I placed a baby for adoption.  I did it because I already had two children and I could barely care for them.  I did it, not because I didn't want him, but because I wanted something better for him than I had to offer.  To this date, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.  I placed my children in a foster home, traveled to Waukegan IL, lived in a maternity home, gave birth to him, and placed him for adoption.  I returned home and resumed my life, thinking I had given him (and myself) a fighting chance.  Not once did I regret that decision.
I thought of him often and had twice initiated a search on my own, in 1994 and 2004.  I registered all my information with the state, adoption agency, and adoption registries.  I stopped short of looking for his information.  Both times, my goal was to leave my information for him to find, so that the timing would be on his terms.  That day came on June 17, 2014, twenty years later.
The email simply stated that my son had registered his information with the adoption agency recently in his attempt to find me.  It also had his name and contact information included.  I waited an hour.  I breathed in and out.  I felt the blood drain from my fingers and toes.  I looked over into the great abyss that was my knowing and not knowing, my loving, and not knowing how to love, my yearning and my not daring to hope.  Then I called him.
We talked for an hour.  We waited a week and talked again. In that first week, I didn't tell a soul, except his bio-Dad.  I wanted to savor the moment and keep it to myself.   The morning after our first conversation, I called his bio-Dad and gave him the contact information.  His bio-Dad and I had kept in touch throughout the years just for this purpose.  Whoever found him first was to tell the other.  He and his bio-Dad met and had lunch together a week later.
My son and I talked about getting together.  I thought we would wait until he could fly down to meet me and his half siblings, but I was so full of anticipation the day he and his bio-Dad met, that I decided I should get in the car and drive up and see him.  I asked his permission to come see him.  Then I enlisted my best friend Ann, who knew immediately why I suddenly needed to go to Chicago. With only two weeks planning time, we put together a 3 day Thelma and Louise style road trip.  We were to meet my son and his brother (their parents were both deceased) as well as his bio-Dad and his wife, who lived in the same city.  We made the drive up in about nine hours.  The first time I saw him, I knew it was him right away.  Ann pulled up to his apartment and he was sitting on the stoop waiting.  I got out of the car (barely waiting for it to come to a full stop) and hurried up to him.  We hugged.  He is a good 10 inches  taller than me, so his hug totally engulfed me.  I closed my eyes and felt myself soar right into and through him and into the clouds.  I was surprised to open my eyes and find my feet still firmly fixed on the pavement.  As Ann drove away, we decided to walk to the beach, 3 blocks away and sit and talk.  We talked for hours.  We asked and answered one another's questions.  After walking back to his apartment, we changed and went to meet everyone for dinner.  My son had invited his family members, and his bio-Dad's family.  We all had the best time getting to know one another.  We took pictures, ate Chicago-style pizza, laughed, and cried.  I looked around the table at my enlarging extended family and felt full of gratitude.  As Ann's natural warmth and loquaciousness is put to use engaging family members, my son, his bio-Dad and I sit next to one another, our three hands forming a tight triad, as we soak in a moment of shared physical reunification.  "This is the gift I wanted to give you", I tell him, "all of us together."  I resist the urge to kiss away his tears and instead stroke his cheek. "Isn't he beautiful?", I ask his bio-Dad.  "Yes, he is", he answers simply as we all gaze back and forth in amazement at one another.  All the others pretend to be busy with other conversations and allow us this small public privacy. Someone has the foresight to take a photo.  It is my favorite one of the trip, our three heads tipped toward one another in a tripod of hard and earnest concentration.
The next day my son took me to a meditative garden and we simply sat in silence and held hands.  I couldn't stop looking at him, drinking him in. He took Ann and I on a tour of all the places he had lived and the schools he had went to as he reminisced his childhood. We had dinner that evening at an Indian restaurant.  I plied him with mango lassas and garlic naan as we all sampled each other's main courses.  We have discovered  a commonality; our love of Indian food. After dinner, we went to the beach as the sun was setting and sat in silence in the sand.
The final day, my son and I went to breakfast with his bio-Dad, and my son's brother came along.  His older brother told us stories about our son from his childhood that had us bursting with laughter.  After breakfast, my son, his bio-Dad and I made a quick trip to visit the adoption agency.  We spoke to the social worker who had sent me the email.  She hugged us all and made a fuss and had someone take pictures of us.  It had been my son's idea to visit her and I could see she was very pleased.  He had made several trips there during years of searching and she had been very helpful to him.  My son  is a wonderful man full of promise and vitality.  He is a quiet reserved soul like me and his bio-Dad. He has world weary eyes, but an infectious smile.  We talk with ease, and try to understand one another. His life has been difficult.  He is fresh returned from two tours of duty in Afghanistan.  As we leave the agency,  I observe quietly from the backseat as his bio-Dad advises him on car repair.  They tip their heads toward one another in a quiet exchange.  The city sights and sounds fall away. The dream child of my imagination gives way to the flesh and blood man occupying the seat in front of me. We have all fallen together in a disheveled heap- blending our disparate lives- getting messy along the way.  Since our reunion, I have ascended the heavens with joyous rapture, and wallowed in the darkest depths of black despair.  Too many emotions to describe.  What the future holds, I cannot say, but it is my earnest hope that we will all face it together. 

The Color of Invisibility

I want to take a moment to address concerns that have come my way in recent days.  I don't expect everyone to hear my message.  In fact, I'm still pleasantly surprised when someone does.  I always hope folks will take the time to really listen to what I have to say and sit with any resulting discomfort for a minute or two.  Its a lot to ask, I know- but the truth is worth it.  As a primer on the racially-constructed barriers African-Americans face historically and contemporarily, I challenge you, Dear Reader, to read the following essay.  This will be no small feat.  It is equal parts long and horrific.  However, there is much to be learned from it.  Don't be put off by the title, it is much more encompassing than the title suggests.




http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ 

I also want to address the subject of labels.  I believe this simple truth: call people what they want to be called.  To refuse to do so is to marginalize that person, render them invisible.  You want to be called by your name, right?  I can't just pick another name at random and start calling you that instead, because it makes ME more comfortable.  Please provide me the same courtesy.  I want to link to a short pithy article that I think is well worth the read.  This is a great overview for those struggling with what it means to be an 'ally.' Pay particular attention to numbers 2 and 4. 


http://archive.today/rPYuH#selection-163.1-391.1


I have no intension of being argumentative.  My energy will not be used that way. This is hard work and each one of us has our own burden to shoulder.  I want to engage and discuss, but I will not defend or debate.   Please do not make it my job to validate you.  Thank you to the true allies out there who truly have my back and have worked hard to support the difficult work I do.  You are true treasures and I am better for your conscious awareness and redemptive action.