Washing the Weight

The duality of Black Motherhood with Activism

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This newsletter rests at the intersection of the unserious ramblings of a woman full of buttered rice and dad jokes and the somewhat sophisticated stories and essays of someone who knows just enough “smart” words to sound super intelligent and insightful.

What will today’s newsletter be? Hm

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I washed my son’s hands in a sink full of water, the basin rising slow, unnoticed. Just like I didn’t notice the tears tracing down my face, quiet as whispers. I had him press the pump, watched the soap bubble up soft in his palm, then guided his other hand to meet it—hands pressed together, tender, as if in prayer.

And perhaps that is what it was, prayer. For myself. Asking God to give me strength I do not have to get through the next few months. I am not ready for my son to be adult in age though he has been considered simultaneously an adult in body and a child in mind. He has been everything to others except who he is. He carries their interpretations, and so so I.

These tears are heavy, dripping with a yearning for softer years ahead. My son is almost 18 and I wash his hands. I wash his hair. I brush his teeth. I lotion his body. I help him dress himself. Everything I would do for myself in the morning, I do times two. For him.

This isn’t exhaustion I feel, though these bones need rest. I feel a profound sadness for what waits for him outside our home. The unpredictable yet very predictable nature of society and her principles. Her values are a bridge made with the bodies of those like my son.

My son has not carried the benefit of youth since he was a young boy. With behaviors they couldn’t nail down and skin they wanted to nail down. A threat on two legs. Provocative with every breath. Fear they felt for the boy who hugs trees. The weaponization of law enforcement because they did not like the sounds that sprung from his tongue because they were not words.

And people like people convenient.

We like to be able to get what we can from them in a timely, orderly fashion, so that we can move on. Impatient they are with the person who must use their hands to “talk,” or write, or push a button…

Frustration they feel when they must decipher what this behavior means or this one. Tasked themselves with being uncomfortable in the presence of someone whose behavior has broken some unwritten, unspoken rule of society. Socially acceptable behaviors that change as society changes and yet we are to automatically pick up on what those changes are. And then abide by them, or be cast aside.

They have made my son responsible for their comfort for years. Years that almost total the 18 years he almost is.

And I have to balance teaching him to take care of himself within a world that will hesitate every single time to take care of him with dismantling a world piece by piece that would find solace in his exile, within his isolation. The community would tell me that unmasking and living free and whole would be the best thing he could do for himself and a beautiful gift from myself. But they have an incredibly interesting relationship with struggle and disability that I do not know. Nor will I ever know.

My boy is Black, and that means—

damn, the sink’s spilling over. Water tumbling, spilling like some quiet river that’s found its way into the house, soaking into everything. Lost in my head, heavy with things I couldn’t name, I didn’t hear his feet making their way into the mess. Didn’t hear him splash, didn’t feel his fingers reach for the coolness, didn’t see the way his eyes lit up like they were holding the sun in them. I missed the curve of his lips when he smiled, the sound of his laugh, soft and full, like the world just opened up and let him in.

I missed all of that, because I was worried about everything else. And that is the constant struggle that I live with, daily. Pockets of sunshine that follow storms. Or pockets of storms that interrupt the sun. This duality is what has defined my life at the moment. Weaving in and out of motherhood and activism. Of love for my child and rage for the systems that oppress him. Trying to be the mama this young man needs me to be, and the fierce, unyielding force that will torch whole lands to shape this world into what it needs to be—for him. For his brother. For all those who are suffocating within systems that only see them as part of their whole.

The autistic community angers me as much as the parents do. Truths I hold with both groups, but can never been seen as a member of either because the intersections of my life are bigger than any one side. I hold truths that neither side is willing to sit with, and thus I do not share them as often as I used to. But I have to be a voice that refuses to let these truths be buried under the surface, demanding that the world listen and understand. It’s a call for empathy, but also a call for action.

Can I tell you what the most difficult part of balancing motherhood with the demands of activism are, especially when the world my child navigates can be so uncaring?

It is finding space to just be—mama. To have these moments where I am just present in my son’s life, no pressure to shield him from the world and its unyielding hand. In activism, there’s always the need to push for change, to confront systems, to fight for the future. But with mama, the fight is more internal, because you want to hold the beauty of your child’s innocence without being swallowed by the overwhelming realities that threaten to take that from him. It’s a balance between urgency and patience, between protecting and preparing.

What’s baffling to me is that I still carry a pocket full of hope, within systems that relentlessly disregard my son’s humanity. How?

My son. I call upon the strength and resilience of my son. That boys’s smile in all this bullshit is a wave of resistance. This world may not know who he is, or even care to, but his love, his very nature…there’s nothing like him on Earth. He will carve pieces of freedom for himself, just as a carpenter with his wood would carve a chair. He will find joy even when the world comes with its boxes and labels and doubt. I continue this work because they will one day see what I have always seen within him.

Being a mama ain’t easy, y’all. But to be a Black disabled mama, to Black disabled sons who will one day be Black disabled men, one of whom is Nonspeaking, is another story. I am constantly trying to reconcile the activism with the tender moments of motherhood. And sometimes, I don’t know how I do it, but they can coexist…but I have to work at allowing each to be in the same room.

There’s a tension between the need for personal connection, for quiet moments of love and care, and the loud, constant demands of activism. My son is both my reason for fighting and my source of healing. Those intimate moments—washing his hands, brushing his teeth—remind me of what I’m fighting for: his right to simply be. The moments of tenderness ground me, give me the strength to fight harder for the future I want for him. Activism doesn’t always have to be loud; it can be quiet and persistent, like a mother’s love, which keeps going despite all the odds.

I didn’t even know what or where I was heading when I wrote this piece this morning. I actually wrote the first paragraph about a week ago. The day after I flooded the bathroom. I stared at the whole “start writing” demand that Substack so graciously leaves us and I did exactly that. Trying to pick up on the emotion I was feeling at that time. I wanted to make sure I captured the balance between the love I have for my son and the heavy burden of knowing what society is likely to throw at him. I am not big on binaries, unless it’s to drive a point home and I really wanted to put on display the acts of vulnerability as it contrasted with the harshness of the world.

This piece needed to mirror the urgency of our daily lives, full of love and nurture with the longer, more challenging, and often unspoken fight for justice and understanding. The mention of my son’s identity—his Blackness, his neurodiversity, the tension between childhood and adulthood—is woven seamlessly into the reflection on society’s expectations. It is this urgent dialogue between motherhood and activism, each pulling in different directions, yet somehow linked. It’s all linked.

Prayer, when mentioned to many within this community is interesting. Largely, most of the people I interact with are not religious at all. Or they do not believe in a Higher Power. I do believe in God, but I don’t subscribe to religion. I wrote about how his hands met together as if it were in prayer. One, this is what it looked like. Two, this is what it could have been. An act of love and one of survival. This metaphor that grounded our personal experiences within the spiritual. I was praying. For him. For myself. I need to keep going. And I needed the guidance and wisdom to do so.

I got all of this from washing hands. Wild, right? But not really. The thoughts always come, even when you do not want them to. My brain is always on, always working. Much like a mama. Washing hands can be just a quiet, normal part of our everyday lives. But not for me. There’s power in those quiet details.

In channeling Toni Morrison for a bit, I wanted to exhibit an unapologetic exploration of Black Life, motherhood, and survival in a world that often wants to erase both.

See, I have a revolutionary heart coupled with the force of a mama’s love. I am going to love hard, and fight hard.