Fight With Us, A Love Letter
To the People,
To be a woman is pain, love, beauty, and joy. It is to bleed and cry. To be a Black or brown woman is to bleed and cry and feel like no one can hear you. Even worse is to realize that they can hear you - but that they do not see you as a being who can feel and who can hurt.
I remember being 9 years old and feeling an unfamiliar pain in my lower belly, so bad that it kept me up all night. The next evening I came home from a classmate’s 9th birthday party and my underwear was splattered in the blood of my first period. That night I sobbed in my mother’s arms, fearing the womanhood that my body had come to embrace, but that my mind was unprepared for and naive of.
The years after that would be filled with period cramps so bad that they would have me vomiting and crawling to the toilet. I’ve suffered from mysterious rashes leading up to my period, horrible mood swings, and pain on and off my periods that shoots from my lower back to my thighs. My pleas for relief have been met with painkillers, birth control, and doctors telling me to lose weight, but no real answers. I am not looking for pity, nor have I ever looked for pity. Rather, my bleeding and crying are the reason I care so much about the health and wellness of my Black and brown sisters. We do not want to bleed and cry and for our pleas to go unheard. Growing up and having to deal with so much mental and physical pain, and then having that pain completely invalidated, is one of the worst feelings─one that can have deadly consequences.
I remember when I was 16 and complained to a doctor about my lower back pain and a doctor told me to “strengthen my core.” I walked out of the office feeling ashamed, like I was dumb for bringing up pain and I would not have felt this pain to begin with if I hadn’t been so irresponsible. I got to thinking about how ridiculous this was and recognized a pattern that my period issues were constantly being invalidated and being blamed on me. I began to read about other women who experienced similar issues, but felt left out as many of these women were white and could afford to visit specialists for assistance. I stopped talking to doctors and even my girlfriends at the time, who were mostly white, about my issues. By the time I got to college, I felt alienated by the feminist movement and like there was no place for women like me.
But something changed. I finally felt the warmth of a sisterhood. Of a sisterhood of women that come in all shades and shapes and who hail from an array of colorful backgrounds. And my brain and belly became full of knowledge, never satiated, and always salivating for more. This knowledge made me angry, like I had lived in a dark room before in a world of lonely ignorance. My feelings of alienation were validated, but I was also angry that we were being alienated, I was angry that my Black and brown sisters had to suffer so much, angry because my sisterhood needed someone to finally fight for us─no─with us.
During my sophomore year I did a research project on the history of Black and Indigenous organizing against forced sterilizations, and gratefully stumbled upon the reproductive justice framework. Finally, a movement and way of fighting in this world that centered Black women and whose history is colorfully decorated with coalition building amongst women of color. I discussed with my lovely friend, Makenna, about the need for this kind of movement today, especially as we grappled with feminist spaces dominated by white women at our predominantly white institution (PWI). She reached out to me a few months later with a vision. A vision to make resources for sexual, mental, spiritual and emotional health accessible. A vision to make growing and prospering accessible. This, combined with our focus on reproductive justice, has grown to be What We Water.
We yearn for the day where Black and brown women no longer have to bleed and cry in silence and isolation. We yearn for the day where we can love, bask in joy, and the future kisses us all tenderly. So please, stay awhile, and fight with us.
Warmly,
Sofia Dean
Associate Director of What We Water
