Victoria Green - Where Is Her Mama?: Practical Advice and Wise Counsel for Our Daughters

WHERE IS HER
Mama?

PRACTICAL ADVICE AND WISE
COUNSEL FOR OUR DAUGHTERS

VICTORIA GREEN

Copyright 2013 VICTORIA GREEN.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-7415-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7417-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7416-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908461

Balboa Press rev. date: 8/9/2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

For Sharlene and Cynthia, Vickie, Betty and every other woman who dared to be a mother. Whether you actually carried, or just cared to be the wind beneath the wings of baby birds.

and our daughters cry,

How can I learn to be a woman if I never see a woman?

These are all our children. We will profit or pay for whatever they become

James Baldwin

FOR THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE IS THE HAND THAT RULES THE WORLD.

William Wallace Ross

I
Leading

B eauty, brains, gifts and talents; jobs and careers. A comfortable lifestyle, a good man, passion. Lasting and meaningful friendships. Quality education. True Love. The almost three decades Ive been privileged to spend on this wonderful earth have brought me to a very refreshing realization. Of all the things a young woman can be blessed with, one of the single most beneficial and enriching blessings one could ever be afforded is that of having at least one real woman who can deposit jewels of wisdom into her to help her through life. There is a definite need for this presence, whether it be found in a birth mother, spiritual mother, church mother or any other female in her life that teaches her the things that real mothers are charged to teach their daughters. Every girl needs a woman or women that help in the transition into womanhood. I have been bountifully blessed to have a real thoroughbred of a mother and several other mothers who have endowed me with opulent counsel to govern my experience in the many capacities in which life calls us to operate. Because of the wealth of maternal influence that has helped to mold me into the woman I am today, the pure principle and essence of God obligates me to share the abundance with those who are destitute. Following the advice of my pastors words to, protect those who made it possible for you to reach the next level, this book is not only a lifeline for scores of young women, but it is an ode to the real women who are irreplaceable and indispensable in my life. I write this, in part, to protect their legacy in making sure that their influence is evident and everlastingly recognized as precursors for my success and well-being.

From what I know and understand, I started life with no mother at all but too many mothers to count. To clarify this contradiction, the woman who gave birth to me, was not a mother at all, in the true definition of the word that I accept, but there were many women who picked up her slack. My ability to be healthy, whole and well despite the carelessness and neglect that she showed for me from my conception forward, gives me strong conviction that someone prayed for me, whether they did so specifically and intentionally or grouped me together with all the motherless children in a generic request to God. Maybe it was prayers that my long deceased grandmother prayed for me or those saints and intercessors that pray for people they dont even know, or merely a divine fate that called God to create me as a healthy, drug-free and intelligent child after being subjected for months to heroin, marijuana, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol in large and frequent doses while in my mothers womb. While there is great ambiguity in trying to determine the sources of prayer that helped me to travail and triumph in my adverse and against-all-odds pre-natal predicament, I am absolutely sure of the influences that contributed to my ability to survive and thrive from birth onward and give positive testament to those women at this time. My aunts were my first mothers, one (my aunt Cynthia) took me home from the hospital to live with she and her family after the police hauled her baby sister off to jail after giving birth to a baby girl in November of 1981. She and her husband, Joe, treated me as their own and soon began efforts to legally adopt me. When the troubles and personal struggles related to the devastation of her husbands untimely death nearly consumed Cynthia, the first mother I ever knew, I had two other maternal aunts, Sharlene and Vickie, who hoisted the ties that bind the person that is me. Sharlene, my eldest aunt, whom I call and consider Mama, exclusively, has been the most consistent, dependable and trustworthy since the first day she began mothering me, along with a host of my siblings and first cousins. My three aunts are a perfect example of the threefold cord, spoken of Biblically, which has held fast to my soul in helping to transform this girl into a woman and girted about my class, character and conviction of womanhood. Then there is the host of teachers, mentors, friends of the family, church mothers and spiritual mothers that Ive come to see and know over the span of my life and have shared their wealth with me in so many invaluable ways. This is testament that one can survive and thrive through drug abuse and when a natural mother makes herself absent. From my aunts and their friends to my professors and Spelman sisters who encouraged, supported, taught, and sacrificed for me, I salute you and with full acknowledgement and acceptance, voice that I would definitely not be who I am without you. Not only did you believe that I could survive and thrive, but you told me, showed me and helped me to realize it. For this Im thankful and now know that it is my turn to be there for someone in those very same capacities as you were there for me.

Recent years as a high school teacher, mentor, tutor, spiritual teacher and writer have allowed me to cross the paths of so many misguided, neglected and uneducated young women. My heart is emphatically saddened and burdened for young girls and women alike, who havent the slightest clue about some of the simplest, much less, the more profound sobering realities of womanhood or life in general.