Friday, March 30, 2012

How Sharazad Ali Saved My Marriage

I was once again blessed and favored to have read, understood and participate in media appearances supporting the book, "The Black man's Guide to Understanding the Black woman."

This book saved my marriage from the beginning. I was greatly convicted by many of the pages in the book because either I saw myself, or someone I knew. I couldn't lie to myself and refused to even try. She was on point, on too many points not to be credible. She is 100% right when she says she the black woman has gotten a pass in this country. We have been made to think we can do bad all by ourselves and it sounds good, but our bad is the worse it can be as evidence by the quality of children we have turned out.

My marriage was not at all ideal, but it was real. We both thought we were right, especially in how we conducted ourselves in front of our children. Her books helped me to work on running my mouth, sitting on my fat ass worrying about what he was doing and who he was with; when I should have been up cleaning my house, cooking a decent meal, helping my daughter with her homework, or being the writer I claimed to be.

Her books put a stop to the mothering and coddling I was well on my way into. They helped me to continue to look for the good in him, to have compassion for him, to love him on a more deeper level. Her books made know I was right when I believed that the black woman is not supportive and understanding enough when it comes to the black man. We don't give him enough space to be him. We insist he changes while we try to act like our shit don't stink, but it does and our children, the ones we are rearing while we are doing bad all by ourselves.

I left all that behind and took every moment of my union to my husband to be aware of what we were going through and accept it is what we were creating for the glory of God. I knew my marriage was a covenant and her books helped me keep it that way.

It was Ms. Ali, not my mother who showed me what a real black woman looks like. My mother and father were married until he died. She never had an ounce of respect for him and did allow us to because she talked badly about him to us. The majority of our contact was with her, so of course she was God to us. As I began to formulate my beliefs about relationships they grew further and further from how I was reared. I knew something was sick about the way they lived. Thank God for the gift of discernment.

When I read Ms. Ali's books, the Warrior Wife in me was born and I made immediate alterations in my way of thinking. It was hard to watch my husband fumble with diapers, and make messes, and put on backwards, etc. I only knew because I was a mother at 17. He was running the streets. Her books helped me let him learn on his own. He deserved to have an authentic relationship with my son, just as I did.

I will not lie, my soul is full right now. I thank God I listened and learned. Now that my family is in distress, we all are handling it well because we have always been thoughtful of our children and did not unnecessarily burden them with our relationship and we learned early to put our relationship first. My kids know their parent love each other. The one thing they hate the most is they could never get us to go against each other when it came to them. If one said no, whether the other agreed or not, the other stood by them.

Thank you Sharazad Ali, but unfortunately 25 years later, black woman are worse than they were when you wrote the book in 1989. God help us!

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