What About The High Place?

Six years ago, I was navigating postpartum with a 1 year old and a 4 year old. I spent that first year feeling afraid of being a mom of two. Feelings of uncertainty, low confidence, grief from a miscarriage a year prior, intrusive thoughts, and being robbed of joy due to comparison. I was told I knew what I was doing because I had already done it before and when I mentioned I was afraid and uneasy it was met with, “no, you got it.” I knew in that moment that I wanted to help other women in postpartum. Especially Black women because the crown we wear is heavy and expected to stay balanced. We must be strong, fierce, and full of certainty. But at times we feel vulnerable, weak, and confused. There’s space in the duality of our emotions that we deserve to experience out loud. We deserve to have support without it being a reflection of our inabilities. We deserve to admit that we are afraid and have a community of people who hear our hearts without trying to convince us otherwise. We deserve the space to grieve the woman we lose in exchange for the woman we become through motherhood.

I thought I was going to die without any reason for having the thought. They were intrusive and constant. There are so many fears you carry while being a mother and the realization that you won’t live forever, only after having children, is the hardest to process. But there is freedom in the story of others and realizing that God sees you. God saw me so deeply that these things I never shared publicly, He aligned for me to be at the right place, at the right time, to hear a woman share her story about her intrusive thoughts about death. To remind me that even in my moments of uncertainty, fear, and attack under His wings I would find refuge.

And what about the high place?

Where I found peace in the dwelling.

Where I felt secure and found rest.

Where I felt fear but learned to believe that danger wouldn’t come near me.

Where God said to me that because of my love He would set me securely on high to be with me in trouble.

To rescue me and honor me.

Psalm 91

I have written through some of my most embarrassing, broken, worrisome, overwhelming moments in my motherhood and now we are at the moment to release it into the world and I have knots and butterflies. A frog is forming in my throat as I reflect on the depth of each poem and essay knowing I’m not alone. I also know that what I am releasing isn’t a testament to my arrival. I haven’t arrived but I have discovered that the journey is full of lessons and I can only trust Him with the process because we are just passing through this place.

Crawling into the embrace of the Spirit and discovering you never left but grew taller, branches stronger, roots deeper.

In A High Place: Black Motherhood and A Woman Rising is an intimate reflection of Black motherhood and the growth of a woman finding her way back to herself.

November 5, 2021