I Deserve the Big Piece of Chicken

I started noticing that I often don't stand up straight.  Like I'm standing, but not standing up. I stand with my knees bent and shoulders rounded. Weird, I know. It’s like I’m in some kind of sports drill pose waiting for someone to pass me the ball. Could be a trauma response from childhood sports, but I will go down that rabbit hole later.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I do not stand up. I do it in the shower even when the water is cascading across my caramel nakedness. I do it in lines, like the perpetual and seemingly endless lines I stand in at airport terminals when we all casually, but coordinately bum rush the door in a fight for overhead space. I do it when I'm standing in my kitchen spilling out my love in a delicious meal. The only times I do not fall victim to my own shrimping of my body is when I catch it and make myself stand up. Nevertheless, more often than I care to admit, my knees are bent, and my shoulders are rounded. I am not standing up straight.  But more importantly and more devastatingly, I have noticed I do it in my life. I began noticing that this odd stance that had become second nature to me was truly a mirror into what was going on inside of me.

Let’s be clear this is not a ME phenomenon. From childhood little Black bodies have consciously and unconsciously been taught to not have their own power, liberty, and autonomy.  We are socialized both at home, in church, and even in the public square that our lives in many ways are second or lesser than in some way. White Supremacy Culture has a way of helping us find our “place” in society that supports a narrative of irrelevance. And many of us don’t even realize that this is an ancestral DNA trauma that we carry in our bodies. It shows up in our lowered gaze, our tense nerves in inter-racial spaces, and even in how we often make ourselves small in social settings.  Dr. Joy DeGruy[i]would label this but another example of the post traumatic slave syndrome we carry unintentionally in our bodies. It is projected in such common phrases as: 

Seen and not heard.

Do what I tell you.

Sit still.

Be quiet.

Don't wear that.

Don't sit like that.

Don't do that. 

Don’t act like that. 

In many ways Black bodies, particularly Black queer bodies, are initiated into a ritualistic anti-autonomous way of being in the world. We are told at school, in public, in faith spaces, and unfortunately often at home, that we have to conform to a standard way of being in the world. Now granted, that standard may look slightly different in your house as opposed to mine. However, the underpinning theme of white Supremacy, patriarchal dominance still holds us all. It’s an taught way of being in the world that we carry in how we perceive ourselves and each other. 

Now couple that shared reality with the messages I received in both being female bodied AND queer. Chillllldeeee, it's any wonder I have an identity to uplift at all. According to how I was raised, I should be married to a man wearing clothes that draw attention away from my full figure and makeup that hides anything not socially acceptable. My point is that I realized much of my life I was told to be small. To not standout. To not take up too much space. That this Black, fat, female bodied, non-binary body was not worthy of the best and most on life. And thus even though my career has pushed me out front in the world, my natural internal chatter still says the opposite.

It wasn't until that moment in the shower when I realized I had been carrying all that shit in how I physically showed up in the world. And that's when I knew I needed to make a change. I had been on a journey of liberation and teaching others to get free, but I failed in realizing that there was a key layer of oppression I had yet to release.

I do deserve a voice. I do deserve a space and place at the table. I am worthy of all that the Divine has already manifested in the course of my reality. And not despite my race, gender, orientation, or identity. I stand in tandem with it. In lock step as factors of me that were my innate birthright. I can just be...because. HARD STOP.

There is no level I have to get to where my liberation has been unlocked like a video game. I'm already there and I deserve it. And just like many cis-het Black dads in households in the 80s that still did sit-down dinner, I deserve the big piece of chicken!!!

That big piece of chicken symbolized so much just by its size alone. Whomever got this particular cut of chicken titty was the person who had somehow earned it. It was for the one who was most deserving and worthy of honor. Yes, that piece of meat at a Black household when I was growing up was the family saying we see you, we respect you, we uplift you.

And who is most deserving of honor in your life but the one whom was uniquely crafted to be you. You, alone, because you are you, deserve the big piece of chicken! And its not something you have to earn. By just accepting the fullness of the reality that you exist as you are, as the Divine created you to be, is enough to make you a valid recipient of validity, honor, and love. You deserve the big piece of chicken because your ancestors couldn’t. You deserve the big piece of chicken because your birthright commands it. You deserve the big piece of chicken, because dammit YOU DO! 

Take up space. Lift your voice. Make your presence known. Lean into being the fullness of self and the total embodiment of whatever it means to be you. Why? Cause you deserve the BIG PIECE OF CHICKEN!!!

Check back next time as I unpack what exactly the big piece of chicken was and how juicy it really is….    

[i] Leary, Joy DeGruy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome : America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, Oregon :Uptone Press, 2005.