I Thought My Lips Were Too Big...
Hello
Fam,
When I was little, I went to a school called Marblehead.
It was an integrated school.
As I looked around at the white kids, I began to feel self-conscious about my lips.
They were too big!
I used to try to do things to make my lips look small like the white girls.
Then, when I was older, I thought I was too big. That’s because I was bigger than the girls
around me.
So, I began taking diet pills… again in another attempt to look like them.
But finally, when I was older, I began going through a
metamorphosis.
My mother and grandmother played a role in this.
Just watching them and how they lived in their skin… I began to like myself.
We had “sit downs” during which they told me that “loving God is what gives you a glow sweetheart. He loves you and he made you in His image.”
They also encouraged me to “learn where I came from and be proud of it. “Take pride in your Haitian and Grenadian roots", they said.
Finally, they told me that no one is going to teach me to love my Blackness in school.
And they were right! No one ever did.
If we’re going to acquire self-love, it has to come from somewhere else.
That’s why EE also played a big role… especially listening to Brian and hearing his amazing stories about us.
I learned so much about being Black.
It made me appreciate my Blackness even more... and all that comes with
it.
My lips.
My hips.
My hair and skin.
And now, all these years later, guess what?
I’m a grandmother.
A grandmother who knows the importance of teaching my grandchildren who they are and whose they are.
I feel fortunate to know these important truths… and I feel proud when I’m teaching them to my grandchildren.
Because if not me, then who?
And if not now, then when?
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We are the change we seek.
Sonya Leak
Boston, MA
