Juneteenth

Yesterday was June 19, or Juneteenth. Juneteenth is a (now federal!) holiday to commemorate the emancipation of African American slaves in the U.S. It’s important to honor the experience of African Americans in since it is so profoundly white-washed and forgotten or ignored.

Yesterday, I celebrated Juneteenth. I wore a new t-shirt I recently got. The t-shirt is black with 9 hearts of different darker skin tone colors. I’m excited to be adding items like this to my wardrobe. It was important for me to wear a shirt acknowledging diversity because it’s empowering as a survivor of domestic abuse.

My abuser was (and is) incredibly, deeply, horrifically racist. He threatened to kill my parents if I so much as talked to a Black person. No, really. One night last June he was extremely irate and went off about me supporting Black Lives Matter. His main threat was that his dad, a U.S. Marshal, was monitoring everything I did (texts, calls, the location of my car, social media posts, Amazon purchases, etc.). That night, he told me he was going to call his dad and tell him to look into my social media posts. He said that if he saw that I had so much as talked to a Black person, my parents were dead. That was another main threat, that he would have my parents killed at a moment’s notice if I did anything to screw up or betray him. I suffered by not being able to share in the pain and suffering of the country as the Black Lives Matter movement was in full motion last summer. The country was angry and grieving George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and I was forbidden from posting anything related to agreeing that Black people deserve rights and at the absolute minimum do not deserve to be killed as they are in this country.

So yesterday, I wore my t-shirt to celebrate diversity. As I got dressed for work, I was deciding what shoes to wear. It was a no-brainer: my Nike gym shoes. My abuser had forbidden me from wearing anything by Nike. He was so angry about Colin Kaepernick (who he referred to as “that n*****’) and said it would be an extreme betrayal to my abuser if I wore anything by Nike. And so yesterday, I wore my diversity t-shirt with my Nike gym shoes. I believe in love, I believe in loving others, I believe in peace and I believe in equality. I want equality. I want equity. I want Black Lives to Matter in our system. I want to share and express my beliefs and I now have the absolute freedom to do so.

Something as seemingly insignificant as wearing a t-shirt and a pair of shoes is a symbol of my freedom and healing. I am strong, I am healing, I am loving and in my true core character I advocate for social justice.

Here’s to healing, growth, and freedom.