THE DOORWAY

I’m hard-headed.

That’s what my mother always told me and never in a kind light. As a young, Black kid in Jamaica, Queens being a hard-headed child was often met with a slap upside the head and made me one of the unruly children that needed modification. I was never a proper girl, whatever that is. I preferred my brother’s hand-me-downs over the pretty dresses my mother filled my closet with. I even donned his Freddy Kreuger shirt like a uniform one summer as I climbed the tree in our front yard and happily scraped up knees as I rollerbladed with ferocious speed to keep up with the boys. I was rough and tough and gave no fucks about it - and frankly, I’m happy to be this way once again. But this wasn’t what I was supposed to be and when met with an absence of love and an influx of ridicule, I learned to put these parts away, to put the blades in the basement along with other parts of myself and alas, I was met with love and praise for the girl I became and that’s how I found worth and also, how I learned to hide from fear.

Until 3 months ago, I didn’t realize how much of my life was prescribed to me and how fear was always the monster in the shadows behind the doorway, keeping me scared and under the covers. Fear made me into a dutiful daughter, always striving to be worthy of my mother’s love. It led me to play the violin when it was selected for me, to dance in West African and Horton styles when all I wanted was to do jazz and tap. Shit - it led me to read twice as many books assigned during every summer vacation and the list started at 25 - a behavior that followed me into my career as an executive. Black excellence… is a trauma response that we don’t talk enough about. Fear controlled my life and no matter what I did and how much I did, it was never enough to get that monster to choose a different doorway to haunt.

I think when we hide and run from fear, we’re often trying to escape ourselves. It’s a race with no end as we attempt to outrun those echoing cries from the parts of our soul that are so desperate to be heard. Running from the parent or loved one that told us to take up less space. To be the thing they needed us to be. And when we can no longer run because our chest is too heavy and our knees have given out, we are right back in that basement, parked next to our childhood rollerblades as we compartmentalize our own being in fear of losing their love, of losing them. This fear of being too much really is the fear of being myself.

I’m hard-headed.

When I told my mother I wanted to be a producer, I saw the fear wash over her face. This fear quickly came forth as anger and I’d become accustomed to that. This is also a behavior that I learned and followed me into adulthood until, through the help of other healers and Black women at that, I learned how to sit with myself, healing through the compassion and gentility I’d always needed. I come from a family of high-achievers but professors, lawyers, doctors and business-oriented individuals who prefer a plan that eliminates failure as an option. A need for safety in a country devoid of it and a world where it needs to be found within. I understand this and even more, I empathize, as I will never know the pain and sacrifices it took for their greatness to have been birthed. So, in my family, the arts are a hobby and an offering from the cultured life we’ve been so fortunate to have due to the diligence and perseverance of my great-grandparents and their offspring. The legacy I was born into was a bar I was told I needed to meet and “or else” remained a faint whisper dangling off the shadow of their tongues and there inspired fear. To pursue a path without any guarantee of return on your efforts was just unfathomable and so, it was met with a lot of ridicule and doubt that I internalized. That is, until the great shero Shonda Rhimes came along and my mother could see the faint dollar signs that came with a dream like this but that foresight always came and went while the truth always remained. Success was paramount.

I saw how my mother marveled at the films we grew up watching. I was raised to love cinema and so, it seemed like a natural fit. It didn’t matter that I found more peace in poetry and that my hand preferred to pen prose or that I was more comforted by finding myself in the stories of others rather than searching for ways to commodify them because it made her so happy to know that all her efforts went to good use. Even throughout the countless breakdowns while sitting on other people’s couches, the nights being up til 2am reading some book for a boss who would offer up a “pass” as an acknowledgment of my efforts and the guttural slow fall when I was asked to offer my unique perspective on a project becauseweallknowwhatthatmeans. I was dedicated to this dream because fear was there in the doorway reminding me of what could be lost if I abandoned it. And, it was.

To call myself an overachiever is an understatement. This need to succeed, to prove myself and validate my existence so that I deserved to take up space led me into bad relationships both personally and professionally, into anorexia, recovery and ultimately, here. To home. Fear had always waited for me by the door of my heart and I didn’t dare enter because I was afraid to find out what was inside. The lost remnants I’d long discarded, left cobwebbed and alone. I discovered that in that room, I was safe to confront the emptiness that had been created within me and the shell that I’d become. In every room within myself, I have dusted off the furniture and toys of my youth, having now redecorated with the experiences and knowledge of adulthood. In those rooms, I am free.

I’m hard-headed.

I’m no longer the dutiful daughter. I’m no longer a daughter at all. Being genderless explains one half of that statement and my liberation explains the other. It took some time, but I’m also no longer an executive and I’m on a path to help others like myself find their voice again. This descriptor has become a declaration. It’s a phrase I’ve grown to love because it conveys that I’m strong-willed, relentless even, and I give all of myself to a cause. When cultivated with love, I’m able to guide others home to themselves with the same care and compassion that I had to learn as well.

Today, I find peace in poetry. I create prose inspired by the expansive life I’m watching unfold and find myself, my true self, in other people’s stories. I even bought a new pair of rollerblades and learned to skate again while in Istanbul. Fear no longer haunts me.

So, if you’re reading this and you’re also one of those hard-headed children, I dare you to claim it as your superpower because it is. Be relentless in the pursuit of yourself and forge a new path. I’ll be right here beside you, in the doorway, ready to conquer fear.