Motherhood in Black & White

It’s always a vulnerable thing to put pen to paper...to type ink into the screen, placing my words into pages on the web for many to read. Sharing my heart and thoughts and experiences—especially in regards to motherhood—is tender. Scary. Fragile. It demands fierceness and gentleness, courage and calm.

You see, my motherhood feels heavy. It was birthed through loss and gain, pain and hope, miscarriage and adoption and biological birth. My motherhood demanded patience and humility. I knew no woman carrying a child in her womb owed me her child...and if an expectant mom somehow deemed me worthy to step in and be her child’s mother, that would be a privilege.

Stepping into motherhood first through adoption forced me to set down everything I thought I knew.

I’m Natalie Brenner. A white mom to two four year olds — one is brown, one is white — with another one on the way. This third child is also wrapped in melanin.

Someone asked me the other day, “What’s it like raising kids during these times? You have a white son and a black son, and there is a civil rights movement happening...what does that feel like for you?”

It feels like a lot...but I assume it has always felt like a lot for the women raising Black and brown boys into men, girls into women.

To be raising a Black son in a society that will clearly deem him as dangerous, older than he is, a threat, and someone who isn’t worth breathing is terrifying. It is heavy. It is pain. It is trauma. To watch over and over again Black boys and men (and Black women) being abused and killed without any justice or consequences to their murderers makes me physically ill. These are the experiences Black mothers have had since the dawn of our nation.

To hear the irrelevant retorts of “what about black on black crime,” and “there is no such thing as white privilege,” and “look at that person's past” only reveals how incredibly uneducated, asleep, and apathetic we have become.

How quick we are to dismiss instead of sit in pain and listen to the cries of the unheard.

Knowing my four year old Black son is growing up watching people who look like him be abused, murdered, talked down to, etcetera guts me. Knowing he and his closest friends have already experienced racial profiling and microaggressions guts me. The first time a form of the N-word was used to refer to my son was when he was two weeks old. And no, that wasn’t the only time or blatant racism since.

To be raising a white son in a society that already esteems him as being smart, represents him everywhere, and uplifts him at every turn feels like a huge responsibility as well. I don’t want my white son growing up comfortable with the privilege his skin gives him; I want him to use it to tear systems down, to stand up for injustice, to speak love and light and healing and truth. I want him to know how to truly listen, to see, to not take everything as an attack but rather an invitation to love better.

My two boys are best friends. Five months apart, and best friends. They are my whole world and I cannot imagine life without them, I cannot fathom them living life without one another.

As a white mom to a white son, and as a white mom to a Black son, I will never arrive. I will never be anti-racist enough. I will never have checked myself enough, and unlearned everything passed down to me through generations of white oppressors. I will never be comfortable with the systems and mindsets we have infiltrating our homes, cities, states, and nation. I believe it is incredibly important for us as white people to recognize that: we have to detox from generations of oppressing. We have so much to unlearn and this is intentional.

I have been processing taking my boys to a protest recently, or as Ira calls it “a Black lives matter.” They came to some marches for #altonsterling + #philandocastile but they were small, strapped into a stroller, blissfully soaking in the energy of justice seekers.

This was different...because they’re 4. They asked to make signs, to show up, add their voice into the cries of the unheard, to listen. They wanted to protest the injustice that brown & Black people are not heard, valued, understood, or given fair treatment — lives swiftly taken, bodies abused, students not seen—then dismissed, no consequence to those abusing their position.

I want to raise justice seekers and they proudly came with their eyes wide open, hands folded tightly into mine, eyes scanning signs asking what each one said.

Afterwards we drove back thru the street where everyone stood on sidewalks. Block after block of people chanting #GeorgeFloyd ‘s name and Black Lives Matter, the boys smiling in the car hearing everyone’s voices.

I laugh-cried driving thru, like the kind of cry that hurts with cautious hope.

I wanted to say, “Sage, this is for you. You matter. And people are starting to see that all humans MUST matter...that things need to finally change,” but I didn’t say those heavy words...it’s much bigger than my son.

I believe true justice and change must happen for all of us, individually + collectively. None of us are free, until all of us are free...and living Black in the “land of the free” isn't yet truly free, but Lord, I pray to God one day it truly will be.

That masks are worn because of a global pandemic and the masses are chanting I CANT BREATHE speaks volumes to me. All our kids will remember this year vividly — 2020 is important history in the making.

My work is to raise my kids wide awake — ready to stand or sit in solidarity, march or protest, LISTEN where justice is lacked and loss of life mourned. This is daily work, internal + external. It’s more than Instagram posts, but those are important too.

I’m committed to spend my life detoxing from generations of oppressing. Privilege and power are embedded so deeply into us we can’t even see it. We don’t see it’s poison or claws because it runs in our blood, our DNA. It is built into our systems, every system—it is everywhere.

For me, of course it’s personal: I have two black kids. I had 2 Black Muslim daughters. My baby’s dad is black. My baby has 3 black brothers + an entire black family/genealogy. As does Sage. I have many black friends & leaders in my life.

But you know what? It’s not JUST personal.

Even if I wasn’t a mom to these two or had no Black friends, this is MORE than that.

This is a humanity problem, a poison needing detoxed, dismantled, uprooted.

There are SO many resources available: Factual, informative, truthful. We‘re so behind, friends. We‘ve not been loving well, not how Jesus modeled. We sure protect ourselves well.

Can we —me included— set our fragility/guilt/privilege down to truly love others better?

Website: www.nataliekristeen.com

IG: @nataliek.kristeen

FB: facebook.com/nataliekristeenwrites

Program: A Path To Healing — a two week program using the tool of the Enneagram to move you towards healing, geared towards women who have been through a divorce or traumatic break up