Becoming a Matriarch: A Memoir

Mama's arms felt like ceremony on nights when the ghosts of my past experiences wouldn't let me sleep.

The women in my family are medicine. They are backbones and ribcages and hearts. They are whispers in men's ears. They are the guardians that kept us whole.

What else have I made my responsibility that no one asked me to take on?

I have done coke off the porcelain backs of public bathroom toilets, but mirrored trays lend some faux class to inhaling cartilage-eating drugs up your nose. The idea becomes alluring and a little more acceptable when mirrored trays are involved. "Excuse me, sir.. I will have some of that high class cocaine".

Inside me, I have a mother-shaped hole I will have to learn how to fill with love. And this process will create a more profound and stronger empathy in me. I know this. I trust this. I have to live this. I have no other choice. Otherwise, all of this pain is meaningless.

Teetering on the brink of relapse and the edge of insanity. I can't fuck or fight my way out of these feelings, so that's a bitch, but the weather is nice. More cream for your coffee, Edna?

Mixed blood bodies, born into poverty are not given many opportunities to escape their area codes, let alone countries