I didn’t grow up in a home that chanted black power every day, but I did grow up in a home that, for the most part, illuminated affirmative love for the black identity. I grew up in a household filled with dark chocolate and caramel black women. Everyone worked hard, was comfortable in their skin, and taught me to be the same. However, as I look back on my grade school years, I find that the affirmation I received at home wasn’t enough for me to love my dark, black skin. In Spite of the love that resonated in my home, I sit here wondering why it took so long to love myself as a black woman.

The obvious answer is that regardless of my beautiful black home, I lived in white America. In addition, the shit storm of blurry labels and directions as a first generation American from an African household didn’t help. I come from a Rwandan family who literally moved to the U.S. the year I was born. Therefore, my experience as a black person is quite different from theirs growing up. For my family, coming to America was a success. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. They weren’t starving and didn’t live in huts before they moved to the U.S. Instead, it was the liberty in America, which gave them an independence that was irresistible to them. In turn, they felt like they were black people who made it! I, on the other hand, had a different experience. As my family’s success in the U.S. rang in my head telling me to be grateful, I felt paralyzed by my blackness.

Since my family grew up surrounded by black people of all types of success and personalities, they were taught that the things which impeded you was war, lack of liberty, poverty, and simply living in a developing country. What I learned growing up in the U.S. was that being black impeded me in every aspect of life. Going to a heavily white populated school made me feel like the “other.” People would touch my hair like some strange alien. Boys never liked me. So I learned that my beauty was non-existent. People told me I spoke like a white person and I only saw the intelligent advertised as white. So I learned that I was supposed to be dumb.

At that time, I needed reaffirmation from people outside my home. I also needed people at home to understand my struggle with self-love as a black woman in a white world. But I couldn’t get either of those things. Eventually, through a windstorm of self-discovery, I fell in love with myself. And regardless of my experience, I’m lucky to look at my blackness in many cultural lenses, which shapes who I am today. Often times, people only see black and don’t realize the many identities black has. The diaspora is an ever-expanding beauty of blackness all around the world. I want my African brothers and sisters across the diaspora to try to understand that sometimes your parents won’t get it, not because they are wrong or don’t care but because they had a different life before they emigrated to a Western country. Also, I urge parents who have children in a country/culture different from theirs to try to understand that the emotions of horrendous downfalls you’ve felt don’t always correlate with your child’s traumatic experiences. Despite the differences, each of those struggles were/are valid.

Planting a seed in a different environment may experience seasons that ceased to exist in your garden.