Chloe Dulce Louvouezo - Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing, and Self-Trust

LIFE, I SWEAR. Copyright 2021 by Chloe Dulce Louvouezo. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Cover design by Dominique Jones

Cover photograph by MF.Jonez from Marsh Kove Media

Digital Edition DECEMBER 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-307224-4

Version 10292021

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307223-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021033075

To Myel, our mamush. It begins and ends with you. You are the catalyst to my bloom and my grounds for renewal. We are growing up together with hearts intertwined. I feel more human because of and with you. You are the reason I never want to be erased from this world. My stories will always be yours too.

To my late grandmother Joyce, who would exhale deeply, fascinated by the stories that live in strangers. You planted the seed and told me to write a book, knowing that even at ten years old, my life was ripe for blank pages. So I did.

To the family Ive never known and the family Ive lost. Despite the mystery of each other, you remain a home base, a beginning, and a checkpoint that informs my essence even in my wandering.

And to the young Black girls and women in every corner of the world. This collection was curated with you in mind. Our spirit cannot be denied because it vibrates from our veins. Nothing can take what runs through us, so long as we know that to be true.

I met Chloe in 2012. When I say I met her, I dont mean we shook hands and made polite small talk. I mean from sunrise to sunset, we curled up like kittens at the foot of our mutual sister-friends bed in Harlem as I listened intently to her tales of harrowing betrayals and crushing blows that she weathered with heroic grace. In a world where most wade into the shallow waters of new friendship slowly and with cautious optimism, we joined hands and cannonballed right into the deep end. And in those deepest of waters, I saw straight into her soul. Little did she know then, Id journeyed a parallel path in love that led to a nearly identical heartbreak I hadnt yet processed and a rebirth I was still undergoing. When she cracked open her broken heart to let me in, I felt blood drip from my own...

If that sounds dramatic, it was.

Thats because in all my twenty-something years on this planet, never had I met someone who I felt so instantly connected to, someone whose mere existence held up a mirror to my own polarities. It would be clich to call her a kindred spirit, but I couldnt shake this knowing that our lives were divinely intertwined.

Wed joke that we were made from the same stardust. So it never came as a surprise when we attracted the exact same men or when we even got mistaken for twins by strangers. It just felt like physical evidence of what we both knew to be true in the spirit realmin each other, we had found an extension of ourselves. But it was much more than just the physical resemblance that struck me. The resemblance was soul-deep. A healer seeking the path toward healing. A free-spirited adventurer and a pragmatic perfectionist warring over which will take the wheel at any given moment. The trusting naivete of a kid at heart with the stubborn resilience of a woman warrior who may have shed blood in the battle but refuses to lose the war. In each of her contradictions, I saw my own.

Since the start of our sisterhood that fateful Super Soul Sunday in Harlem, weve lived lifetimes together and co-created many more harrowing tales. Along the way, Ive had the privilege of witnessing Chloes resilience on repeat in real time as her life has continued to unfold with one remarkable act of faith after another. As a sister, I feel the pain and joy in her experiences as if they were my own. As a fellow writer and author, I am jolted by the impact of the poetic honesty in her words.

Now, as she prepares to bravely share many of those stories with and for youstories that bonded us back thenI am overwhelmed with a sense of pride to write alongside her and so many other Black women warriors whose narratives fit into a larger tapestry of our collective traumas and triumphs.

This book is an embodiment of the power of all the untold stories that bond us. Each one an essential part of our collective experience as Black women.

Across the diaspora, Black women are so often the backbones of our families. The prayer warriors. The protectors. The strong friends. The ride or dies. The teachers and healers of the world. A world that has turned its back on us throughout history. Still, we rise, but who can we count on to hold us down? We do so much explaining of ourselves, of our value, of our identities, yet so much of who we are is never truly seen or understood. The exception to that rule is when we are in the presence of our sisters. There is an immediate exhale, an intimacy even in the wordless exchanges that reset our nervous systems and fill our bodies with a sense of safety.

Thats because our stories are as intertwined as our traumas. The same is true of our healing. Each time I let someone hold a piece of my heart thats been hurt before. When a sister-friend trusts me with her truth. When an elder tells her story for the first time. When we listenreally listen and hold sacred space for sisterhood, we instantly come into awareness that we are all more interconnected than we realize.

What I know for sure is this: There is so much healing locked up in the stories Black women never tell. But a powerful ripple effect is set into motion with each tidal wave of truth that is introduced to the collective consciousness. This is how radical healing happens.

The inverse is also true. When we withhold or hide the parts of ourselves that need healing, we rob the collective of becoming whole.

Because heres the thing about healing: It isnt linear and its never just about you. When we heal our wounds, that healing is felt across lifetimes and lineages. Generational chains are broken when we engage each other in the process of the inner work we simply cannot do alone.

When you tell your truth, I become more accountable to my own. When I engage in the brave act of acknowledging my pain aloud, it gives you permission to access yours, too. We become mirrors to and for each other.

Your healing is my healing.

Your freedom is my freedom.

Your work is my work.

Your peace is my peace.

How would you show up differently in the world if you knew this were true?

How much more honest would you be?

How much more grace would you give?

How would you show up differently as a friend, sister, daughter, and mother?

Each story in this book extends an invitation to you to dive deeper into your own self-reflective journey in order to access deeper levels of healing that can only happen in sacred community. This book offers a safe space for Black women to feel seen in our most vulnerable and authentic truths. Through Chloes meticulous curation, she invites you into a community that blossoms with each breakthrough and that challenges you to do the work you were put here to do.