Second Waver, I hope it's okay for me to post about your post titled "On Going Back"...

I wrote so much in Second Waver's comments section after she referred to her reading of my life journey, I realized I should just post a link to her original post and paste in my comments below! :)

Second Waver wrote:

"I was reading Dark Daughta's latest post about her discomfort while rubbing elbows with a big crowd of fellow Caribbean immigrants at Toronto Caribana festival a couple nights ago.

Dark Daughta also can't bring herself to visit her grandmother and other extended family who are still in Barbados, where she lived until she was, I think, about seven years old.

According to Dark Daughta, at Caribana, and in the environs of her relatives in Barbados, there's a stifling, christianity-based, heterosexualist, judgemental fog that envelopes that community. Dark Daughta analyzes it as the colonised, as a historical survival tactic, taking on the hierarchical, exploitative values of their oppressors, and it's so intolerable that she can hardly stand engaging with it.

In a few days I'm going to Colorado and Wyoming to see my folks again.

I was there in April for a week, but for reasons having nothing to do with my family of origin, that visit didn't work very well. So since my father's health seems to be quickly worsening, and since my first trip back there in nearly 4 years didn't really work, I've decided to make a repeat trip, now.

But why was I not there for the past four years? And why, 4 years ago, was I only there for 3 days?

Because of my family of origin's heterosexism, their religiosity, their libertarianism, their catholicism, their classicism, their blind white arrogance. All of which were mine, to a greater or lesser extent, before I moved away fom there almost 30 years ago, and after that, too. Well, I certainly have kicked the heterosexism and the religiosity (including catholicism), and the libertarianism, but I'm still workin' on the rest of that list.

A woman recently said to me that she commonly hears from white folks that they've turned their backs on their families, because of all their isms. She emphasized how warped that is, to remove yourself from the people you love. She said, "Go back there and engage with them. Running away does nobody any good at all."

That's what I'm doing now. It's hard, but it can also be wonderful. Now that I'm back, I'm changing those rules, since I'm obviously still a part of my family.

Dear Dark Daughta, I wish that could become possible for you, too. I wish there were a way you could re-enter or at least visit the community that in so many ways you love, and thereby sow the seeds of change there.

I don't know your issues, of course, but I'm sorry to know that you're apart from your people.

Well, I'm leaving in a matter of days. I'm steeling myself, out of necessity, but I'm hopeful.

Dark Daughta, please send me your good wishes. I'll let you know how it goes this time.

Love, Secondwaver"

In her comments section we both wrote: