My Black is NOT Cracking.

Summer has always been more than just a season. It’s a feeling. It’s a time when the days stretch out before you, offering time and space to reflect, heal, and to grow like those collards in the garden. It’s a season where everything feels just a little more possible. It’s a season of longer days and louder laughter. Feeling the sun on your skin, you’re reminded that even after the longest winters, warmth returns. It’s the season of cookouts and the smell of barbecue and music drifting through open windows.  It’s a time of vacations and escapes from routine.

For me now, summer is less about escape and more about rediscovery. It’s a season for looking inward, and for daring to believe that some pieces of joy can still be found buried beneath grief.

I have come to the realization that not only is my Black cracking. My Black is shattered. Cracks can be repaired to some degree. I can get filler if I want to poison myself. But how do you fix shattered? How do you pick up the many pieces of you and put them back together? Can you even do that?

I stare at the fragments sometime.  The little bits of myself scattered. It’s a shattering so complete that I sometimes don’t recognize what’s left. I don’t recognize me.

My goal this summer is to attempt to do this. I must. I miss living, and let’s be real—I have far fewer summers ahead of me than behind. To quote the line from Shawshank: Get busy living or get busy dying. I miss my life. Even some of the less pleasant parts. The days with too much to do. I miss the rhythm of normal. I miss the version of me that didn’t know this kind of pain.

The past five years have been BRU-TAL. They have been filled with loss. All kinds of loss. From loss of family, surrogate sisters, and friends—and although several were a result of death, some were the simple result of the death of a relationship. Not all loss comes with a funeral. Some of it is just absence. Silence.

The loss of friends who had no words when I was in pain, so they stayed silent and invisible. I even wrote a blog post to offer some guidance. I tried. I offered the roadmap. One thought after not seeing me for over a year it would be a good idea to start our first exchange telling me how great her granddaughter was doing—knowing I had just lost mine. One, after not seeing me for a year after my loss, thought it was appropriate to say, “I’m glad you’re in a better mood.” Bitch, grief is not a mood! It was—and is—my reality. Then proceeded to attempt to engage in some sort of “grief-off!” As if pain were a competition with trophies for surviving sorrow.

It is when you are at your lowest that you find out who your real friends are. You realize who really loves you, and your circle shrinks as a result. Friendships are like plants. Unattended, they die. Plants without water wither and die. Some friendships didn’t survive. No matter how many years. No matter how many memories. When you suffer the devastating loss of a child, you are just never the same person. You can’t be. Something so fundamental breaks in you. They were once a physical part of you, and I think to some degree, they remain a part of you. When you lose someone you love that deeply, they take a piece of you with them. A part of you dies as well. You don’t just lose them. You lose the you that you were with them.

Your true friends are the ones that love the new version of you. The shattered you. The scarred you. They are not hiding out waiting for the old you to return. Waiting for you to “get over it.” They will be waiting a long ass time—because you don’t get over it. EVER. You learn that this pain is a part of your life now. A constant companion. You carry it with you for the rest of your days, and if you are lucky, you carry it well. With grace. With courage. With honesty. No one can carry it for you, but true friends are there to lean on when it gets to be too heavy. Too much. And trust and believe, it gets to be too much. Often.

But this summer, I will try. I will pick up a piece at a time. I will not glue it back with shame or silence. I will breathe. I will learn to laugh without guilt and cry without apology. This summer is not about fixing the unfixable. It is about learning to live with the mosaic I have become. And maybe, just maybe, finding beauty in the shattered pieces redesigned.

(You may not hear from me weekly for a while, because I am working on bringing something new to the stage and one day, a screen other than this one!)

P.S. Please consider supporting the Ciré A. Forman All 4 Sports Foundation. https://donorbox.org/be-amazing https://cireaformanall4sportsfoundation.com/