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Image sketch of black woman one

notes on how to be a Black woman
for Sonya

please don’t hurt me

Amid soulful mourning, months after the murder of Sonya Massey by a police officer in America, Dionne St. Hill reflects on the sorrow and sacred rage Black women feel, as they grapple with the emotional impact of the killing of another sister.

Author: dionne st.hill 

Read time – 14 minutes

My 13-year-old son asked me what was wrong last night. He was unwell and I was sitting on the side of his bed, comforting him until he fell asleep.

Our space was dark, just faintly lit by a shard of light from beyond his room; I steered around my hurt and worry and told him I’m okay.

Pushing through his 13 years and finding a tone that captured his need for me to answer honestly, he repeated ‘mum, what’s wrong’.

It’s tricky side-stepping the sanctuary of avoidance when you spend most days attending to others’ wounds.

‘I am holding a lot, and it feels hard right now, I told him’. Then I allowed myself to breathe and smile, ‘how did you know son’… you are so intuitive. The proud therapist mummy in me was doing a little dance.

He smiled back; my boys know that dance, ‘no mum, I could just see it in your face.’

No light required to read it; my son has come to know my face well.

In the middle of the night, through the hurt and the sickness, we landed in a quiet, melancholic knowing.

 

nightmares

 

On July 6, 2024, Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old mother, was shot in the face by a White sheriff’s deputy in her home after she called for help reporting a prowler.

Holding these pictures in my mind, I imagined those loving micro-moments Sonya may have shared with her parents and her children – her 17-year-old son and her 15-year-old daughter. Reflections and trauma linger.

The excruciating pain of seeing their daughter, their mother in the dim compressed light of that body-cam footage stays. The superpower that is love illuminates everything, even in the absence of light.

The darkness of this latest act of state brutality against a Black woman has crept into our souls like a nightcrawler. Much like the intruder Sonya sensed, you may not be able to see this prowler immediately, but we know it’s there. A super predator in a uniform.

The insidious creep and anticipation of violence or death creates this sense of hyper-vigilance that many of us survive with. A soul-felt expectation of annihilation over assistance.

Right now, Black women across continents, lands and languages are holding a fear that cannot be seen or found by those who do not love us or seek to protect us.

For we know intuitive, soulful, spiritual, betwixt and between women like Sonya are prescribed and pathologized rather than respected and revered. In the days before she was killed, Sonya experienced premonitions of her death. Spiritual forewarnings that were brutally accurate. And, in her final mortal moments, Sonya knew that evil was in her midst; she called it out and rebuked it.

 

sacred rage

 

Beautiful healing circles have naturally emerged in the weeks following Sonya’s murder; tearful, breathless spaces, inspired by sacred rage have become important places to share, connect and emancipate our tears.

We find ourselves in mourning, lighting candles, cleaning, crying, writing, swerving, masking, but always holding soul-centred vigil for Sonya.

I am not my sister’s keeper; I am my sister,” reflects Koya Conteh, an African Centred Healer and Arts Psychotherapist. Koya is travelling with the pain to a divine and sensitive stream of consciousness, sifting through the aching whilst panning for the gold in her mind.

“We are worthy, we’re powerful, we’re beautiful, we’re courageous, we’re conscious, smart, we’re beautiful, we are compassionate, we are nurturing, we are nourishing, we are mother earth,” she affirms through tears.

“This is beyond vicarious trauma,” Koya says, “this is fear, this is pain… say her name. Sonya did nothing, Sonya called for help, they’re supposed to be there to help us. It is so upsetting, so upsetting.”

This nightmare transcends continent divides, DNA, culturally differences, and intersections of identity, we mourn through the power of wisdom, ancestry, and Ubuntu, holding the ancient truth, that ‘I am because we are’.

 

i am Sonya

 

I am Sonya. We are Sonya, Joy, Cherry, Sandra, Brianna… we are every Black woman.

“I must always keep in mind when I advocate for my sisters that mono-racial Black women, who are phenotypically African, are the most at risk of misogynoir and anti-Black women hatred”, reflects Beth Dale, a Keyworker and Women and Girls Lead.

But it often feels hard to talk, some women just aren’t ready, still trying to make sense of a crime, that will never make sense, some sisters just need to be, while others simply can’t find the words, Ese-Roghene Agambi, African-centered Psychotherapist said she just can’t. ‘My house is sparkling’ she told me. ‘I’ve cleaned, polished, hoovered and washed, but I cannot talk; I have no words.’

“It is such a heavy feeling, “says Koya, “Sonya is now one of our ancestors; she is one of the ancestors that gets mentioned in my prayers, that I send love and light. I ask her for guidance, peace, protection and courage,”

Koya is committed to love, so this hurts her in subterranean and ancestral places – and when she says love, she means L.O.V.E – she is committed to Listening, Observing, Valuing, Validating, Empathising and Encouraging.

“I am saying her name, remembering her in spaces, playing music for her, having conversations with sisters, crying with sisters, breathing with sisters,” shares Koya.

For others, Sonya’s murder has helped them remember who they are, finding the words through their writing to discover and become the woman they are destined to be.

 

we are not our trauma

 

“To me, there is no other people more important to me than Black women, says Beth, “I am so blessed and thankful to be a Black woman.”

“We are not our trauma”, she continues, “but our pain helps us realise our power. In the face of insurmountable adversity, Black women continue to put one foot in front of another.

We will continue to make Black women only spaces; create art for Black women; make jewellery for Black women; research and write for Black women; love for Black women.

“My only wish is for one day we don’t have to live a dual life; a life of intracommunal suffering and a life we must show wider society. I wish for our cries to be heard by everyone; the cries of the Sudanese, Kenyan, Tigrayan, Congolese, and all Black women in the global majority, to pierce through everyone’s heart.”

Beth believes a commitment to liberation and abolition is key to our safety as Black women. Reform hasn’t worked; she knows that what we need is the elimination of systems that hurt us. Never has it felt more important to dismantle and build something new.

“This is what we mean when we say institutional racism, on a systemic and systematic level, has an intrinsic effect on how police interact with us and how we must operate,” she explains. “There is no bad apple; the entire structure is designed and run exactly how it was intended to.”

“I am excruciatingly aware of how the police see us and would much prefer not to see their hatred in action,” she continues. “It’s so violently unfair that our death is a spectator sport – a pundit talking point to discuss whether the cause was institutional racism, police failing, individualised misconduct or resistance.”

As a therapeutic activist, I am with the power of collective consciousness, the ‘field affect’, the shared energy, our interconnectedness, the deep invisible channels of energy, awareness and relationship that bond us and guide us.

We are paying attention, our pain is fresh and sore, and the grief cannot be snatched from us, it is there and clung to tightly finding it’s way out in safe spaces, fundraising, marches, protests and sharing and writing circles.

Beth is unequivocal: “I am radically pro-Black and violently anti-white supremacist in all its mutative forms. I will scream for Black women to be respected, uplifted and protected until my final breath and the universe calls me to my next life.”

 

builders and protectors

 

As a builder and protector of our community, the murder of Sonya, which has been described by many cultural commentators and social activists as a ‘lynching’, speaks to the absence of safety in communities where Black people live and attempt to survive beyond a trauma response of atrophy.

“Working in the field that I do; violence and death is so common and over the years I have noticed that my responses to such insufferable pain, is the avoidance of connecting to how I truly feel in the immediacy of an incident taking place” explains Joanna. Dale, a Social Worker, “I guess it’s an attempt to cope and a way to preserve myself until I can meet with my emotions face to face and go through the process of hearing what each has to say.”

Through this, Joanna has found a way, needed a way, to speak directly to Sonya; after a day of contemplation, she wrote: “My darling sis, I have noticed after the horror that has happened to you, I am not yet ready to dialogue with my emotions, so I am just comfortably sat in feelings of quiet rage, which is a familiar place, a safe place.”

She continued, “Over the last few days, I have had to watch my 17-year-old daughter navigate your death, too, as it is all over her social media timeline. This morning, she came into the room I was working in and just sat on a chair and stared out of the patio doors into our garden. We sat in silence, not one word spoken but our spirits communing all the same.

“How do I reassure and affirm my daughter that her beautifully melanated skin, her compassionate heart, her giant spirit, her essence and light, is loved, valued, seen and heard? Whilst she is continually faced with the brutal reality that Black women, Black men, Black children’s lives are viewed by many as dispensable.”

 

how we heal

 Joanna’s letter of love to Sonya raises questions many of us are struggling with. How do Black women – mothers, daughters, sisters and aunties – disrupt the flow of transgenerational and intergenerational pain?

Pain teaches us so much, but healing in this moment feels so distant, so hard, yet so urgent and so necessary.

How do we heal, I don’t know,” says Koya, “How do we heal from the hurt when the pain is so deep, each time another sister is attacked or disrespected, is murdered, our soul, our body remembers all those before us, our foremothers, our ancestors, our people, each time, our transgenerational stuff hits.

This pain feels like all the rest, all the Black women before” Koya reflects, “it rips us open; each time it happens again, allowing us to see again, another sister, another mother, another aunty, another grandma, another little angel, it doesn’t matter what age, what size, what hue, when you’re Black, you’re invisible, you’re only visible when we take you out, be quiet, say nothing.”

Those that loved Sonya and have come to know her through the portico of a screen may find a way to soothe their souls one day, and they may not, for we know systems can be dismantled, but hearts cannot be unbroken.

“It’s strange, as I believe Divine Spirit was preparing me for this,” reveals Joannahe knew ahead of time the process which I and our global community would need to go through, and he woke me up with ‘I Gotta Find Peace Of Mind’ by Lauryn Hill, playing in my heart on repeat.”

“I knew a greater message was being conveyed to me; amid perpetual trauma, unbearable pain, continued shock and outrage, and many unanswerable questions, Divine Spirit was asking me to audaciously believe that, despite the insidious lie deep in my subconscious that this is it, our reality, our fate. I must intentionally grab hold of the truth that peace, healing, and freedom for Black people is possible.”

For Imani Ulaini, African-centred historian and author of the Pan-African Uncle and Auntie book series, pushing back on a European colonial narrative is the only way out of the stranglehold of oppression that creates a violent climate of entitlement and impunity.

To heal we need a deep knowledge and understanding of self” she says, ‘We are the mothers of creation; we were here first. Everything and everyone flows from us. Our history is empowering, emancipating and healing. We are beautiful, powerful, gifted, talented and golden,”

Imani continues “My encouragement to my sisters – in the spirit of Sankofa – is go back and study your precolonial history, we really need to grasp that and hold on to that. When we immerse ourselves in our history, we are transformed; that renewing of the mind will change us and empower us to stand up in the face of this outrage,’

The path to liberatory healing is flooded with tears. If you listen closely, you can hear our hearts breaking. Black women are shallow breathing and deeply sighing through collective mourning – a field of intrusive thoughts, feelings, delicate dreams, visceral nightmares and shared intentions that impact us all – entirely and profoundly.

Joanna finds a way through the mire of oppression and pain by allowing words and prayers to flow: “Sonya, it is my firm belief that my peace, healing and freedom and that of my daughter, is inextricably bound to yours, to your children and your children’s children. Through our interconnectedness, we will mourn and grieve you, the beautiful life that was taken mercilessly.

“Our communal suffering will also be our communal strength, communal resistance and communal power. Your death will not be in vain; your name will not just be a hashtag or a trend on social media. Sonya Massey will be a name remembered in history, a name laid with our great ancestors and those who went before us,” she concludes.

Our collective wound feels indelible and pronounced right now. We will heal, but when we do, we will heal like keloid scars becoming bigger than the original wound.

Black women mourn holding too much scar tissue to be erased or removed, our war wounds are our battle cries, our pain and our knowledge, destined to be alchemised into power.

In healing, we allow our outrage to be the fuel of our resistance.

 

Rest in Eternal Peace, Sonya

 

Footnotes

Sankofa: A gift from the Akan people of Ghana, Sankofa means ‘to go back and get it’. Adinkra symbols – the Ghanaian art form imbued with wisdom capture Sankofa through the drawing or print of a mythical bird flying forward with its head turned backwards.

Ubuntu: An African philosophy that honours self through others and celebrates the belief that we have a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. Ubuntu can be translated as ‘I am because we are’ or ‘I am, because you are’.

Imani Ulaini’s Pan-African Uncle and Auntie book series can be found at www.junopenarts.com

 

For Sonya, track on rotation:
Black Butterfly, Sounds of Blackness

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