I was picked on as a little girl because I was too light-skinned. And when people say, “Your parents are your first bullies,” I know there is a whole lot of truth in that statement because I lived it.
In my eyes, I wasn’t just bullied. I was tortured, traumatized, mistreated, and made to feel like I didn’t belong in my own family. All because I was too light-skinned.
Everybody else in my family was medium brown to dark brown, and somehow, that gave them the right to mistreat me. They treated me like I was an outsider, almost to the point of disowning me. I was violated in ways that no child, especially a child under the age of five, should ever be violated.
And the people who were supposed to protect me? They didn’t give a damn!
I grew up hating myself because the very people who were supposed to love me my parents, my siblings, and my family—were the same people who traumatized me day in and day out. My older siblings could do whatever they wanted to me, and nobody cared. I had bruises, black eyes, and even a chipped tooth. And still, nobody cared.
When I finally found the courage to tell someone what one of my cousins had done to me, what happened? I was called a liar. I was told I was making it up.
Imagine being a little girl, already suffering, already hurting, and when you finally open your mouth to tell the truth, the very people who should believe you make you feel like your pain doesn’t matter.
That kind of betrayal does something to a child.
People talk about bullying in schools, and yes, I was bullied in school, too. But let me tell you something: Nothing those children did to me in school compared to what my own family put me through.
School bullying hurt, but being bullied in your own home, by your own blood, by the people who are supposed to be your safe place? That’s a different kind of pain. I watched my sister get treated better than me. She got the nice things, the new things, the things that made her feel special. And me? I got the hand-me-downs. You would have thought I was adopted.
But nope! Same mother. Same father. Same blood. Just different treatment. And from where I stood, the only difference was that I was light-skinned with what people called a decent grade of hair.
Imagine growing up feeling like your own family hates you because of the skin you were born in and the hair that grows out of your head. I didn’t ask to be light skinned. I didn’t ask to look the way I looked. I was born that way. And somehow, I was punished for it.
It took me a long damn time to learn how to love myself. As I got older, I started running away. And I didn’t just run away once or twice. I ran away all the time. Why? Because I wasn’t loved at home.
Why would I want to stay somewhere I wasn’t wanted? Why would I want to stay in a house where I was constantly being hurt, mistreated, and made to feel like I didn’t belong? But here’s the crazy part. When I ran away, I got beaten for running away. They were angry because they got in trouble when I disappeared. But nobody wanted to talk about WHY I kept running away. Nobody wanted to talk about what they had done to me. Nobody wanted to talk about what they had allowed other people to do to me. Nobody wanted to take accountability for the little girl they had broken.
They were more concerned about getting in trouble than they were about the pain that made me run away in the first place.
So, of course, when I finally got old enough and had the opportunity to leave, I LEFT. And I haven’t looked back.
Let me make something perfectly clear.
Those people are dead to me!!!
My family is dead to me. I don’t want to be around them. I don’t want to be connected to them. I don’t want to hear the excuses, the lies, or the rewritten versions of what happened to me. I lived it. I survived it.
And I don’t need anybody to validate what I know happened. What makes it even sadder is that the trauma didn’t stop when I left home. Because I grew up without love, I went looking for it in all the wrong places. I endured even more trauma at the hands of different men because, deep down, I was still that little girl who just wanted somebody to love her.
Somebody to choose her. Somebody to protect her. Somebody to make her feel like she mattered.
And for a long time, I never found that love.
When you grow up being mistreated by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, it can affect how you see yourself, what you tolerate, and what you believe love is supposed to look like.
And that is a painful lesson to learn. But here’s where my story changes.
I CHOSE ME.
Through disconnection, counseling, self-reflection, and healing, I started putting myself back together.
Am I completely healed? No. And I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I am.
There are still things I’m working through. There are still memories that hurt. There are still wounds that remind me of what I survived. But one thing I know for damn sure is that I HAVE HEALED. I have grown. I have learned. I have found strength in places where I once only felt pain.
And baby, HEALING LOOKS GOOD ON ME!
So, I want to say something to every Black woman reading this.
I don’t care if you’re light-skinned, brown-skinned, dark-skinned, or every beautiful shade in between.
LOVE YOURSELF.
Love the skin you’re in. Love your hair. Love your features. Love everything about yourself that somebody else tried to make you hate. And I know that’s easier said than done. Believe me, I KNOW. I know how hard it is to love yourself when your own parents don’t love you the way they should. I know how hard it is to feel beautiful when the people closest to you make you feel ugly. I know how hard it is to believe you’re worthy when you’ve spent your childhood being treated like you weren’t.
I KNOW WHAT THAT FEELS LIKE BECAUSE I LIVED IT.
But somewhere inside you, there is a spark. Find it. Even if it’s buried underneath years of trauma, rejection, abandonment, and pain, FIND IT!
Because that little girl inside you deserve to know that she was always worthy of love. She was always beautiful. She was always enough. And none of the things that happened to her were her fault. You don’t have to keep begging people to love you. You don’t have to keep showing up for people who never showed up for you. You don’t have to keep calling somebody family just because you share the same blood.
BLOOD DOES NOT GIVE ANYBODY THE RIGHT TO ABUSE YOU, MISTREAT YOU, OR DESTROY YOUR PEACE.
And let me say something else that some people might not like.
IT IS OKAY TO HAVE FUNERALS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL ALIVE.
Yes, I said it!
You can grieve people who are still walking this earth. You can bury the relationship without burying the person. You can love yourself enough to walk away and never look back. And you do not owe anybody access to your life simply because they’re related to you. I don’t give a fuck if those people are dead or living!
What happens to them is no longer my concern. I spent too many years carrying pain that I didn’t create. I spent too many years suffering because of what other people did to me. And I’m not spending the rest of my life doing it.
I REFUSE.
I have moved out of the country, and I’m living my life to the fullest. I’m doing things that make ME happy. I’m making decisions that bring ME peace. I’m creating the kind of life that the little girl I used to be could only dream about.
And for once in my life, I am not waiting for anybody’s approval. I don’t need their love. I don’t need their acceptance. I don’t need their apologies to move forward.
I HAVE ME NOW.
And that means more than I could ever explain. So, to every Black woman who grew up feeling unwanted, unloved, overlooked, or mistreated because of the shade of her skin, please hear me. You are not less than anybody. You are not a mistake. You are not the ugly duckling. You are not the problem simply because somebody decided to treat you like one.
YOU ARE WORTHY. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. AND YOU DESERVE PEACE.
Don’t let the people who broke your heart convince you that you don’t deserve love. Don’t let your childhood become a life sentence. And don’t let anybody make you feel guilty for choosing yourself.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. Healing doesn’t mean forgiving people who have never taken accountability. And healing damn sure doesn’t mean giving your abusers another opportunity to hurt you. Sometimes healing means walking away. Sometimes healing means cutting ties. Sometimes healing means moving thousands of miles away and building a life where nobody has access to your peace. And sometimes healing means looking in the mirror and finally loving the woman staring back at you.
THAT’S WHERE I AM TODAY.
I’m not completely healed, but I’m no longer that helpless little girl begging to be loved. I’m a grown Black woman who knows her worth. I survived what was meant to break me. I walked away from what was destroying me. And I finally learned to give myself the love I spent so many years looking for in other people.
MY FAMILY MAY HAVE BEEN MY FIRST BULLIES, BUT THEY WILL NOT BE THE AUTHORS OF THE REST OF MY STORY.
I took my power back. I took my peace back. And most importantly, I took MYSELF back.
HEALING LOOKS DAMN GOOD ON ME.
And to the woman reading this who is still trying to find her way out of the darkness:
BABY, IT CAN LOOK GOOD ON YOU, TOO. ✨
