I have been quiet on social media and on the blog recently. During lockdown I’ve struggled like many people have struggled. Struggled with working from home, struggled with isolation, struggled with being a parent at this most challenging time. I had blog posts planned. My trip to Singapore with Baby T feels so long ago. I had planned to share my experience travelling solo with a baby. Somehow travel blogging during a pandemic felt ludicrous. I had a milestone birthday during lockdown and Baby T had her first birthday. Neither was what I had planned but we made the most of it. I even penned a blog post about my arrival at “middle age”.
Sadly my birthday fell in the same week that George Floyd met his end under the boot of a police officer. I’m not going to lie. It felt like utter shit to watch yet another video of a black life being snuffed out of existence. I didn’t publish my blog about my birthday that week. After a few weeks of debating black humanity (shouldn’t really be a debate anymore people…!) and unfriending a lot of people in Facebook I eventually decided to have a social media break. It has now been two weeks since I logged in to Facebook. No messages. No newsfeed. No sharing. For the first time in more than a decade I am Facebook free. If it wasn’t for some of my friendship groups that only really exist on Facebook I don’t think I’d bother going back.
But here I am. About to shout my thoughts out into the void of social media in case anyone else out there can relate.
So what is making me so happy?
Not a huge amount frankly. Am I glad that for the first time lots of people are really thinking about racism and how we all contribute to it? Yeah but I’m not giving out medals for that. What I’m feeling good about right in this moment is being happy in myself about who I am right now. I wasn’t always this person. I’ve changed, grown and learnt a lot since I arrived on this planet.
I am a woman. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a feminist. I am always trying to be a good ally to my trans sisters and brothers. I am black. I am white. I am Asian. I am not on a diet. I am wealthy. I am generally physically and mentally healthy during a global pandemic. I am happy.
But that doesn’t mean the last month hasn’t taken it out of me. Explaining the same thing over and over again is exhausting. Having to do so whilst other people centre their own experiences and feelings rather than facing some hard truths is doubly so. But now is not the time to just let things go unchallenged. I will be picking myself back up in the next few days and will be banging on about how Black Lives Matter. How they should matter to everyone as much as they do to me.
My mother is a black woman. An African woman. Her experiences are not mine to tell but I’ve seen how her life is valued less than other people’s. I also know that my life, having been born with one white (biracial but white passing) parent is valued more than hers in many situations. It’s not ok. And this is why black lives need to matter as much as any other kind of lives.
