I looked into the mirror today, smiling for a change, wondering what it would teach me. I noticed the ripples in the clay-colored wrinkles beside my eyes delineating the signs of wisdom that only age can bring. The mirror reminds me I will turn thirty-eight this season, a reminder that I have traveled a long way from the reluctant womb that was a receptacle for my entrance into this world, the reluctant womb that gave me up because I was a biracial birth. Because I did not have a fit mother as the other Muscogees had, I\u2019ve been coerced to find things out on my own that I otherwise would have been taught. I find myself realizing I\u2019ve spent all of my life doing this… and wondering if I will spend the remainder of however long I have left doing the same thing. How beneficial it would have been had I been taught the necessary life skills that come from loving mothers, skills I\u2019ve had to scratch and claw for, by humiliating trial and error, fighting and struggling every step of the way; indeed, fighting against the womb that bore me.<\/p>\n
Peering into the mirror, I asked, \u201cHow can I comprehend this all?\u201d If I die like my beautiful vanilla-skinned daughter in a tragic auto-train accident, or if I die like my dark chocolate-skinned father in a head-on truck collision, what will be the moral of my story? That I scratched and clawed for nothing? That my terra cotta-skinned life was worthless and \u201cgood for nothing\u201d like the biological one who bore me used to say?<\/p>\n
While these are plausible considerations, the mirror reveals to me there is some force inside me-a strong life force-that compels me forward, and even fancies at times brief images of being somebody<\/i>; brief images of me rising above what others see as unattractive mixed-race skin. I sometimes see my reflection of greatness which I have relegated to a cry for significance from my inner clay-stained child. The one who was neglected, abused and rejected; the one who because of this can never be whole. I have become strong, my skin taut, by learning to live with the ever-present anguish of not being whole, while whole people have passed me by, enjoying their wholeness, unaware of my fragment.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2003 Deidra Suwanee Dees and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.<\/font><\/small><\/small> <\/small><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mirror, Mirror by Deidra Suwanee Dees June\/July 2003<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[110],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tma-articles-and-commentary","tag-the-multiracial-activist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-5c","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2001\/08\/Articles-and-Commentary.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2788,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/2788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}