MotheringOurselves (Manifest!)

(distilled from Audre Lorde's Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger)

We can make something out of anything.

We recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

We establish authority over our own definitions.

We claim power over who we choose to be, knowing that such power is relative within the realities of our lives.

We provide an attentive concern and expectation of growth, which is the beginning of that acceptance we came to expect only from our mothers.

We affirm our own worth by committing ourselves to our own survival in our selves and in the selves of other black women.

We refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the possible in ourselves, at the same time making a distinction between what is possible, and what the outside world drives us to do in order to prove that we are human.

We recognize our successes and are tender with ourselves even when we fail.

We learn to love what we have given birth to by giving definition to, to be both kind and demanding in the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success without misnaming either.

We lay to rest what is weak, timid and damaged without despisal and we protect and support what is useful for survival. We explore the difference together.

We stand toe-to-toe inside rigorous loving and speak what has always seemed like the impossible to each other.

As we speak the truth to each other it become unavoidable to ourselves.

We can learn to mother ourselves.

We can make something out of anything.