The Invisible Black Woman

Day 3 of IOP arrived much sooner than I’d hoped, but I took comfort in knowing that I would have a 4-day break before I’d have to come back. That alone put a smile on my face. When I arrived there and got buzzed in, I saw something curious. Well, it was curious to me because it wasn’t expected (but looking back, so on brand). Most of the staff was gathered at the nurse’s station and Carrie was in the center, ukulele in hand. My curiosity was definitely piqued.

I slid quietly into one of the rocking chairs and hoped to be a fly on the wall so as not to interrupt. At first they were chatting with each other and at some point, her colleagues egged her on to play. Best form of peer pressure ever, I thought to myself, because like Mo’Nique, “I would like to see it.”

She obliged the group, much to their delight, and began strumming a chord that sounded very familiar to me.

At some point, Carrie saw me sitting there watching.

“I thought we were on for 3:15?”

“Oh, we are? I thought it was 3.”

I got there minutes before 3 and was so proud of myself for just barely getting there on time, but on time nonetheless.

“Huh. I guess I’m early then. I meant to do that.”

That got a few chuckles from the crowd.

She continued playing the ukulele and then threw in a song for good measure. And, y’all, I swear her voice sounded just like Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole who sings “Over the Rainbow.” I went from feeling, “let’s get this over with” to wanting to close my eyes and just listen.

And just as I had drifted off in my mind to dreaming of beautiful sandy beaches and rainbows, the music stopped.

“All right, guys, I’ve got a patient waiting so I’ve gotta go.”

Honestly, that would have been therapy enough for me, but I guess that’s not exactly how it works. Even though IOP was from 4:30 to 7:30, I was there early because I had my individual therapy session with Carrie before group.

I followed Carrie into one of the offices and sat in a plush executive chair as she closed the door behind me.

“Okay, well, welcome. That is what happens before folks come in. We mill about and do a decompression in the middle of the day.”

“I like it.”

“All right. You know, we gotta be able to survive the thing, right?”

“Yes! YES!”

Looking back, I said those yeses just like that viral clip on YouTube where the most adorable toddler is asking her mother for a strawberry. When her mom finally figures out what she’s asking, she responds yes twice excitedly, with that last one being super emphatic. If you’re ever having a bad day or need a stat dose of a warm and fuzzy feeling, just fire up this clip. You’re welcome.

But honestly, I found it more than a bit comforting to be reminded that therapists were also humans dealing with some of the same mess we were. It definitely made me feel much more at ease about having to be there in the first place.

“So how’s your day going?”

“Not too bad.”

“I like not too bad versus not too good.”

I smiled. We chatted a bit about my internship and how that was going. Mentally I was impressed she remembered so much then considered that she likely studied up on things before I showed up.

I gave her a rundown of how my internship was going and classes in general. I was genuinely excited to talk about how things were and the projects I was working on during my internship.

“You are lighting up right now as you talk about it.”

“In my ideal world, I would just work for organizations like this, ones that are still about the mission. The ones that go, ‘this is our mission statement. We live it, we breathe it.’ The ones that are still small enough to not get caught up and lose sight of the mission.”

She asked me some questions about the work I did as a small business owner and how that all got started, and I found myself talking to her with ease about how it all began.

“So I’m hearing that you have a lot of strengths. You are able to identify those really well and have been operating in them, which is really awesome. A lot of people come in here thinking they’re at the starting line, right? You are not at the starting line. You’ve already begun the journey, right? We’re just on the sidelines cheering you on as you continue. That’s all we’re gonna do here: be your cheerleaders.”

Damn it, she was starting to chip away at my protective armor.

“Today we’ll be doing the psychosocial assessment. So I’ve gone in and put in what we already talked about so I don’t have to ask you the same questions again.”

And then we dove right on in, but it felt organic, unforced. Pretty soon, we were on the topic of faith and values and beliefs.

“My faith has definitely kept me from doing things I couldn’t take back. You grow up believing suicide is the unpardonable sin. Everybody has different beliefs, but it has kept me from taking that step. Also, it’s what I rely on when I’m having a tough time. When it gets particularly dark, I rely on my faith to help me get through.”

“Spiritual support is very helpful for recovery.”

I’m not sure if I half expected her to bristle at my statements about my faith and how I was raised. She didn’t bat an eye.

“Do you have any cultural factors influencing treatment?”

That was an easy question.

“Yeah, I think that’s why group therapy is going to take me a minute to get used to. It’s a lot. I’m trying to be open to the idea that it’s good for me, but I’m not quite seeing it yet. I feel extremely vulnerable and very uncomfortable sharing. It’s one thing if it’s one-on-one, but it’s a whole other thing with all these strangers. It’s vulnerable, it’s overwhelming, it’s a lot.”

“Right, so that’s going to take a while.”

Huh. No, “well, you need to be open,” or “it works if you work it”? This was a relief but confusing AF at the same time.

I recalled to Carrie my deer in headlights feeling walking into drama therapy in progress and being introduced as the new kid.

“Usually, it’s not that intense, especially with new folks in the group. But the group is in a transition stage right now. Half have been here for a while, and half are new. It’s still in the forming stage, where people are getting comfortable and understanding how they fit in the group dynamic. You’re coming in at a place of transition as well.”

“I definitely felt like I was thrown into the deep end.”

“That is completely normal, especially never having done this before. Before your current therapist, have you ever had a therapist before?”

“No.”

“So you’re doing a lot of new things. Culturally speaking, what is this like for you?”

“It’s very unorthodox for a Black Caribbean person to do therapy. We don’t even talk about our problems. This is why my sisters and I don’t talk right now. One of my best friends told me once, ‘you’re too white for your family. You always want to talk about your problems and face them head-on.’”

Yes, those were her exact words. And yes, I did have to respond with, “say what now?”

But I got what she meant. Secrets and pretending runs deep in Black Caribbean households. As in, family always comes first no matter what—even if they are toxic or harmful. The way we approached disagreements, blowups, or harm in my family is they would happen, we would stop talking for a day, weeks, or months, then pretend like nothing happened and just move on. That has never sat right with me. I always wanna talk about things. And that isn’t in any way traditional from a cultural/ethnic standpoint. I imagine it’s not that much different in Black American households either. Maybe it’s got something to do with the haunting shame that rather than protecting each other, we often perpetrate the most harm to one another—given all the atrocities we’ve suffered at the hands of others. Maybe that is what compels us to cover up and pretend like abuse, trauma, and toxicity isn’t running rampant in our household.

It reminded me of the time when we were living abroad with my alcoholic father for 11 miserable months. I won’t get into it too much here because that is a story for another time that deserves more care and attention than I can give it in a single post. But the crux of the story I wanna focus on is holey shoes. As in, my sisters and I had holes in our church shoes. Every spare penny my father had he drank, so we weren’t going to get new ones. When they got so worn that we may as well be barefoot, my sisters and I stopped going to church. But we went to a small church so people definitely noticed. So in true church family fashion, members of the church would stop by to check in on us. And my sisters and I took turns each week “being sick” because we were too ashamed to tell them we didn’t have church shoes we could wear.

None of us were anywhere near past our tweens and it had already been ingrained in us that family business is family business and nobody else’s. And thinking about it some more makes me realize just exactly where the idea of “suffering in silence” comes from as Black girls who go on to become Black women that see the same cycle of trauma, abuse, and violence repeat itself elsewhere. And because it’s so commonplace growing up, tolerating a bully or a toxic or micromanaging boss at work suddenly doesn’t seem anywhere near as intolerable as things may have been growing up. If you could survive an abusive parent, aunt, uncle, family friend, surely this is nothing. In fact, you’re probably making a big deal out of nothing. I mean, that trauma you dealt with growing up, or during that horrible nightmare of a relationship, now that was unacceptable and intolerable. What’s a little microaggression here, a macroaggression there; an inappropriate, tone deaf, and insensitive comment from a boss or coworker? I mean, it’s not that big a deal, right? So what if they want to touch your hair and get offended when you say no, or worse, touch it anyway? Why should it bother you if people ask you if you wash your hair “when it’s like that”? And yes, all of these things actually happened, more than once.

To the original heart of the question that these situations evoke: it’s no big deal … right?

Well, if what I experienced is any type of indication, it’s no big deal until it is.