Black Love Month: Black History from an African Womxn's Perspective

Written by Filsan Abdiaman

"How you gonna win if you ain't right within?"

— Lauryn Hill

Over the years, since moving to Canada, I haven’t given much attention to Black History Month (BHM) and it’s ironic, some of you may say, since I am a Black womxn.

But being a Black womxn of African descent, Black History has taken on different meanings to me over the years. Growing up in Kenya, everything I learned in my high school history lessons was about the colonial, white British monarchy and it’s achievements.

Kenyan, Somali or African history in general didn't count, to be precise—it was neglected and this has had a tremendous effect on my identity.

I only started to learn more about African history in University once I moved to Canada and even then, BHM came and went without much impact on my day-to-day life – I still felt so far removed from the Canadian-Black experience presented in this very short month dedicated to all of Black history…

How did the Black-African-Muslim womxns experience fit into this picture? To tell you the truth, I was indifferent to it all and did not care.

And being trained to look at things through a white, colonial lens, for a very long time I felt lost, unworthy and un-loved.

Most of my struggles with identity were rooted in self-hate; as I aspired to an unattainable ideal of “Whiteness”— from the way I dressed, behaved, spoke and wore my hair …

Kwesi Botchway, Blue Stool Gaze, 2020. Acrylic on canvas.

I was never taught to love me…

It was reading the radical and wondrous works of bell hooks and Audre Lorde, who paved the way for much of what we know today about (Black) self-love and community care, that opened my eyes to so much about Black Love and how it can be used to combat the frequent, if not daily, experiences of anti-Blackness. Through their works I studied, I taught myself to love all of my being. But it wasn’t until I discovered running that I fully appreciated their message. Running gave me the self-awareness I needed to help me put all their lessons into perspective—

loving my Body and my Blackness in the mostly white spaces where I ran (it’s no surprise that running helped me embrace my natural hair).

Eventually, I began to use a similar loving lens to understand the significance of BHM in my life.

Here is a piece of that understanding:

Black Love / Black History / Black Futures …

what it all means to me is

My journey to Self-love,

As a Black-African womxn

Diving into the deep-end of heartache

Making a home in those once frightening dark

places /spaces

where almost always,

I find the tools to love all of me

In sifting through the dark abyss of pain,

the “what’s next” phase of my life is rendered clear —

there is room to be human…

there is room to be flawed

there is room to love

this Beautiful Black Queen…

And I continue to

celebrate my Blackness.