In October 2008, I started to conceptualize what would eventually become the what I claim as my calling—encouraging and supporting African-American mothers and fathers who despite living apart are, want or could be parenting together. Like many vocations, mine was born not of some brilliant idea but rather of an almost desperate need to see myself and my experiences reflected among the plethora of stories and images of women, mothers, parents on this journey of parenting alone or together after a split. Although I found many resources that supported single parents, single mothers, even, as well as those which addressed the challenges and the possibilities after divorce, none really felt like “home” to me.
I was a single, working, Black mother of a brilliantly busy little Black boy. I was among the unwed, and I was struggling trying to find a way to manage conflict with my son’s father and keep our family as far away from the court system as possible. I felt alone, and the absence of my resemblance in the books I studied and the sites I visited mirrored back to me that I was.
But the truth, which became clearer to me through blogging, is that I am not alone. My experiences, my voice, colored (pun intended) by everything that has converged to create me as I am in this moment…it all matters. Somehow it connects me to people who on the surface seem most like me. But mysteriously, it also opens me up to those who at first glance do not. Being able to express myself fully through this medium, through this beautiful place called Moms of Hue, knowing that what I say, who I am is embraced, provides me with a potent reminder that the same is true for all of us. That all of our voices matter…and that there is a place for each of us to call home; a retreat to which we can retire to be fed, filled and empowered to stand strong in who we are so that our mattering might make a difference in this world.
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