Written by: Trish B. Award-winning Publisher + Cultural Commentator
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In the soft glow of Mother’s Day, deeper truths are hidden beneath the surface with an Instagram caption saying, “She’s everything I am.” For many broken black men, mothers are the only black women who are completely loved, completely forgiven and fully respected.
Even if she breaks their hearts, she is the only one who gets blessings.
But what about the black women they date? Who will appear, make sacrifices, pray and pour? Often leaving gasping for emotional oxygen in relationships built on traumatic bonds, unhealed wounds, misguided expectations, these women become quiet victims of wars they have never started.
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From birth, black boys are often taught that their mothers are sacred. She is personified. Survivor. A woman who did it with little or no help. And it creates a powerful, yet dangerous one-woman pedestal.
It would look like this:
And when that mindset is not checked, it becomes an emotional qualification. He doesn’t want love. He demands that he be a mother again.
“He wanted me to cook, clean, raise, support his dreams and not question him, but to be silent when he hurt me. But when I asked him something, I became the villain.”
– Anonymous submission, Black women’s healing circle
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This is what is rarely spoken out loud. Some of these men were injured by their mothers.
procrastination. Good feeling. operation. Overdependence. But despite those traumas, she still gets a pass.
But a woman who loves him? We inherit the weight of what she didn’t say. We will become the battlefield of unsolved cries of his inner child.
According to a 2022 study of intergenerational trauma in the black community, 76% of black men surveyed admitted that they “often suppressed emotions due to childhood experiences,” but only 19% went to treatment.
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We see it every day – at stages, songs, funerals:
“I was a female dog, but my mom? That was my queen.”
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It’s performance, not transformational.
Is it really an honor? It’s the way you tell us when no one is watching. How to show emotionally for your partner. How do you take accountability when you hurt us? Instead of crying about it and blaming your past.
If you can give unconditional blessings to the woman who created you, you can give healing blessings to the woman who is trying to build a life with you.
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We became a rehabilitation center.
He raised grown men who refused to do their inner work.
We raced against a pedestal that we never asked to climb.
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We didn’t have to be mothers before our wife, we left to raise our own children.
We are wives. Warrior. Healer. Creator. Not a representative due to the lack of emotional maturity in men.
Rewriting the rules. Choose yourself. Setting standards. And then we leave – not bitter, but bold. Our love is God and we refuse to give it to those who only know how to worship the past.
Call this, not cancel.
To black men: Respect your mother, yes. But you will heal us so that you can also honor us.
Because until you do that, your mom will be the only woman who has seen your whole heart.
And that? It’s over now.
