Where Is Her Mama?: Practical Advice and Wise Counsel for Our Daughters

By Victoria Green

This title beautifully celebrates the strength and resilience of African American women of the past, charges those of influence to rebuild in this present age and challenges brown girls to invest for the future. It also encourages these women to embody the wealth penned on these pages in the form of empowering truth gained through experience and lifelong gleaning. Victoria Green offers

a beautiful and vivid link to phenomenal African American women of past generations,
candid advice for living, and
substance and style of profound prose, poetry, and intellectual discourse along with that of other emphatic leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452574165

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 VICTORIA GREEN.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7415-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7417-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7416-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908461

Balboa Press rev. date: 8/9/2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I Leading

II Lost

III Love in Lessons

…On motherhood and womanhood

…On Housekeeping And Cooking……

…On work

…On dress, personal care and hygiene Carrying yourself like a lady

…On public decorum and common courtesy

…On men

…On love and relationships (yourself and others)

…On running your business (instead of just your mouth)

IV Legacy

V Lasting

VI Leaders

VII Lenders

REFERENCES

For Sharlene… and Cynthia, Vickie, Betty and every other woman who dared to be a mother. Whether you actually carried, or just cared to be the wind beneath the wings of baby birds.

…and our daughters cry,

How can I learn to be a woman if I never see a woman?

These are all our children. We will profit or pay for what—ever they become

—James Baldwin

FOR THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE IS THE HAND THAT RULES THE WORLD.

—William Wallace Ross

I

Leading

B eauty, brains, gifts and talents; jobs and careers. A comfortable lifestyle, a good man, passion. Lasting and meaningful friendships. Quality education. True Love. The almost three decades I’ve been privileged to spend on this wonderful earth have brought me to a very refreshing realization. Of all the things a young woman can be blessed with, one of the single most beneficial and enriching blessings one could ever be afforded is that of having at least one real woman who can deposit jewels of wisdom into her to help her through life. There is a definite need for this presence, whether it be found in a birth mother, spiritual mother, church mother or any other female in her life that teaches her the things that real mothers are charged to teach their daughters. Every girl needs a woman or women that help in the transition into womanhood. I have been bountifully blessed to have a real thoroughbred of a mother and several other mothers who have endowed me with opulent counsel to govern my experience in the many capacities in which life calls us to operate. Because of the wealth of maternal influence that has helped to mold me into the woman I am today, the pure principle and essence of God obligates me to share the abundance with those who are destitute. Following the advice of my pastor’s words to, protect those who made it possible for you to reach the next level, this book is not only a lifeline for scores of young women, but it is an ode to the real women who are irreplaceable and indispensable in my life. I write this, in part, to protect their legacy in making sure that their influence is evident and everlastingly recognized as precursors for my success and well-being.

From what I know and understand, I started life with no mother at all but too many mothers to count. To clarify this contradiction, the woman who gave birth to me, was not a mother at all, in the true definition of the word that I accept, but there were many women who picked up her slack. My ability to be healthy, whole and well despite the carelessness and neglect that she showed for me from my conception forward, gives me strong conviction that someone prayed for me, whether they did so specifically and intentionally or grouped me together with all the motherless children in a generic request to God. Maybe it was prayers that my long deceased grandmother prayed for me or those saints and intercessors that pray for people they don’t even know, or merely a divine fate that called God to create me as a healthy, drug-free and intelligent child after being subjected for months to heroin, marijuana, cocaine, tobacco and alcohol in large and frequent doses while in my mother’s womb. While there is great ambiguity in trying to determine the sources of prayer that helped me to travail and triumph in my adverse and against-all-odds pre-natal predicament, I am absolutely sure of the influences that contributed to my ability to survive and thrive from birth onward and give positive testament to those women at this time. My aunts were my first mothers, one (my aunt Cynthia) took me home from the hospital to live with she and her family