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| Guest Blogger: Miyona Perry
IG: @23withnodegree & @missmiyona1019
Website: www.23withnodegree.com
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After examining my life and those around me – via social media and such, I’ve noticed a heartbreaking trend: the absence of a father.
Now while it’s very courageous of a woman to take on the role and responsibility of the both parents, it’s time we start to get real and raw about this.
A father is the first encounter for both a son and daughter, outside of the nurturing contact with the mother. The father is there to be the stronghold, a provider. He is the one who guides the family, leads the family. He is the one who gives his daughter the confidence & high self-esteem she will later value and carry within herself. He is the one who shows his son how to ride a bike, pray, play basketball, etc. The father is truly the pillar of the family, he sets the TONE – now if the lead of the house is absent, what are we left with? Follow me, if we are supposed to be following this mold of: Christ | Husband | Wife | Children in which Christ is supposed to be on the head of the Husband, the head of the Husband is now onto the Wife, etc & that mold is now broken, what are we left with?
We are now left with women who are now pissed and angry for allowing their self to deal with someone they thought wouldn’t leave; Sons who look towards the streets or outside influences (the media constantly feeding their minds with crap) and daughters who are looking for a void (please don’t lie and say this isn’t true).
This is my problem: somewhere along the lines we stop REQUIRING. We stop requiring our men to be fathers, we stop requiring on behalf of ourselves as women to uphold a standard. We start to get a little bit more laxed in how we approach relationships. As we tend to require less, the more men stop stepping up. It seems to me (just my opinion) that after the 70s era, things got a little shaky. We started to go into the drug era and all hell has broken loose. As a result of the crack / cocaine epidemic, families were truly destroyed and broken. Let’s not forget factoring in the aftermath of the mentality embedded in our black men thanks to Willie Lynch (shout out to you – you did a number on us), the term family really hasn’t hold any term of value since then. But, before I get into my “black panther moment” let me try to keep this as concise as possible…
Because of this shift & the man not being around, things are out of order. We are creating generational curses. When are we going to stop pointing the blame at others and look at our own lives. We can no longer force our children to reap the rotten fruit of our bad seeds that we’ve sown. Why must we continue to do this to ourselves?
The hurt, the guilt of our parents mistakes we have to let go of. This is only making matters worse. We have young girls out here on Instagram and Vine twerkin & cussin’, YOUNG boys (toddlers) out here holding baby bottles as 40 ounces, pretending to be a “man” by yelling at someone… & the people who are videotaping it, are LAUGHING & we think this is OKAY?! All because WE chose NOT to heal? We sing our hearts out to K. Michelle’s, “Can’t Raise A Man” not knowing that it’s OUR fault why we have grown boys out here walking the streets and getting into relationships – all because the guy WE chose, chose not to be involved. This trend of hurt, this generational thing of absence is all pathological and it has to STOP somewhere.
There’s even fatherless children in “two-family” households. Just because we SEE that the father is there doesn’t mean he’s emotionally and spiritually there. So while we’re all rooting for marriage, or rather forcing ourselves to love the idea of a person, we’re creating and setting bad examples there as well.
This is all to say this: we need to 1) get back to the basics of true premise of family and this cannot be obtained until we 2) get our lives together and get it together through Christ. Here we are torturing ourselves, living in our hurt and misery, THINKING it’s not hurting anymore, when in fact, the same hurt we mask, shows up in EVERY area of our lives. We need to get real with ourselves because with every generation…it gets w o r s e. Men are AFRAID to cry, to be open, to love & love hard because of their past. Women are afraid of being their self because they think that someone will love on them more if they projected a different persona. Do y’all see this? Is this NOT frightening to know we are all walking around like dead zombies because we kill our spirit man, blow by blow because of unattended wounds? This boils down to a) not being open to discussing mental health & counseling and b) losing the Center of ourselves which should be a spiritual connection with our Father. We would rather go about our lives and consume our time with crap, “make-pretending” (got that from Mo’Nique in Precious) than to get in the core and start looking in the mirror.
I cry everyday because a lot of the pain I see in people’s eyes could have been prevented had they gotten the help they needed. Granted, it’s never too late to allow God to mend and heal those wounds the proper way but still, we let all this extra noise blind our eyes and ears to the real. Life has taught me that until you get right within yourself, NOTHING else can fall into place. We have to get OUT of our feelings and learn how to heal.
I encourage you guys to start a self-love journey & really shun away all of this extra stuff and get to the essence of who YOU are! How can you be a successful person if you’re broken inside? How can you handle mentally college or the real world if you are b r o k e n.
Sorry for the very lengthy post. If you made it this far through the post, thank you! Feel free to comment!
Blessings,
-Miyona ♥
