Cultural Pain

Pain is inevitable and comes in various forms, but how do we accept and deal with pain? It can take some time to even realize you are even harboring pain in the first place. It is important to your mental, emotional and physical health that you take responsibility of your emotions and figure them out. Find the problem, and fix it. That can be easier said than done, but trust me, it must be done!   

I have been trying to write this blog post for over a month now. I was having trouble really getting to the point because there's just so many to be made. J. Cole just released his new album and his track FRIENDS, hits home. The entire album really helped me really finish this blog post. Speaking on all the things we all deal with as people, but mostly the black culture and the cycle of pain we get put into.  

Anger can be caused by some type of pain, which could have been caused by family relationships, romantic misfortune, being bullied when you were younger etc. As a black woman, we are categorized as angry before we even speak. We can have plenty of valid reasons to be angry, but no matter the reasons, or even if we are NOT angry about anything we still are labeled the angry black woman. Being a minority period can supply you with plenty to be upset about. Anger is something we have to learn how to compartmentalize. Figure out where it belongs and leave it there. I believe when we don't try to understand/accept ourselves anger will consume and destroy you.

Seeing how other people treat you because of your skin color alone is enough to make a person become jealous and or angry.  Now add in your hair texture, your cultural background, social status etc. All of these things sometimes may have made our younger selves say " I wish I was white " or "I wish I was normal".  I was recently watching " Ugly Delicious" on Netflix and during one of the episodes exploring great authentic Chinese food in the states; this very conversation was the topic of discussion. Wishing that their food wasn't so smelly because it didn't fit into " White Culture" or was "normal". How insane is that?! To think that children are scared of their culture let alone food and wish to be white because the insecurities that are placed on minorities for not being "simple" as I would put it.  

This is a real problem minorities deal with and can alter the way we value our own culture and beauty and can cause deep undealt with pain. These are things that have to be rectified at some point in our lives before it becomes destructive. We cannot walk out into this world wishing we weren't ourselves. You have to be able to love who you are  to lead a happy and healthy life. It's hard when we are children to understand why the world is saying negative things about you or makes us feel subpar and that's even if you even catch onto that's what's being said. As we get older and more aware of the world, you finally start understanding what's being said about "you" and it starts to shape how we interact with the world. Sometimes it can make us more passive and quiet to appease the "simple" people. Sometimes it can make us so angry, that it keep us stuck. 

Our culture shapes a lot of how we interact with our family and how our parents, parent. "What happens in this house stays in this house" is a common saying known in the black household. You don't speak about your family problems to other people. This is a catch 22 for sure. You either say what's bothering you and have your mother at your neck, orrr you stay quiet and let it build up causing damage to yourself. These are things that can dig a hole into your mental and stay there for years without ever showing you that it's a problem.  The year turned 18 was when I realized I had waaayyyy more problems than I ever even realized. Things that had happened to me as child that I never was able to digest all started to manifest itself. Now 26 year old me realizes that I have to take time to digest personal problems and figure out how to deal with it. 
Families tend to be a huge contributor to your personal problems and pains.

Even if you have the white picket fence and both parents, there can still be problems within the core of your family. Now don't get me wrong, family can be a great source of inspiration, encouragement and positivity. However, it can be one of the hardest relationships you have. Either way, you are still responsible for the outcome of your life. Your life is not determined by your family. Your choices will always be yours. How you choose to deal with problems you experienced is for you to figure out. Your experience, your pain, your solution. Dwelling in pain can only bring more pain.

 Figuring out what issues we have is hard because it requires that we actually look at ourselves and say "Damn I got some problems". It means that we have to admit that we are not as perfect as we think we are. Taking the time to get to know yourself isn't always just taking yourself out for a movie and dinner, but sitting at home and writing some of your problems out. All the things that make us uncomfortable with ourselves. The things that we've pushed all the way down and covered up, the things that we don't speak about because it's too painful or gets you too angry at yourself or even others. Those are the things that can hinder you from growing. You have to digest these pains for yourself. Not so that you can have a successful romantic relationship but so that you can be the best version of yourself. As a result of doing that, you will then have better relationships. You will be able to fix relationships, figure out the value of relationships. Pain can turn into anger, and anger can either motivate you to change OR you can let it destroy you.

As J. Cole said " What I'm tryna say is the blame can go deep as seas, just to blame em' all, I would need like 20 CD's", which is so true. We can try and place blame on so many things that attribute to who we become but at the end of the day, we all grow up and make choices. We untimely have the power to make choices for where our life goes. There are sacrifices we all have to make at some point and we all have to put an action to plan. Shape yourself into the person you want to be. Let me hit you with this cheesy line " be the change in the world that you want to see", lol. As cheesy as that is, it's very true.  

I know this post was very long but this is a very personal post and It took me a really long time to even finish. I wanted to  post this LAST month but just couldn't get it to where I wanted it to be. I hope you all enjoy what I had to say. As always leave some comments on what you think.