Notes From a Child-Abuse Survivor

"Why are you crying? I'll give you something to cry about" is a common phrase with which many African-American children are familiar, but Crunk Feminist Collective writer Crunkonia describes these words as a trigger. A survivor of child abuse, Crunkonia details how her mother's threats and subsequent actions toward her as a teen turned those words into a battle cry that wired her for fear. That emotion resurfaced recently when she read the police report of Pastor Creflo Dollar's altercation with his daughter.

According to Dollar, his daughter didn't give enough deference to his privileged position. She didn't acknowledge his authority. She "became very disrespectful." He told the police that he approached her to "restrain" her. That's his report.

I have a report of my own, one from my own kitchen floor. Distance, linearity and many of the things you expect as Western-trained academics are impossible for me. See trauma theory. See black women's biomythographies. See yourself in the mirror and try to tell, in five minutes, a very very bad thing that happened.

In the kitchen, I triggered my mother. Her thumbs pressed my trachea and she shook me back and forth like a button-eyed rag doll. I didn't know when she would stop or if I would still be alive when she did. My first mind said, "This is Momma," but my second mind made my hands spring out. I can still feel her flesh moles under my fingernails, my hands trying to pry her arms away, her eyes wide with shock as she realized that this "bitch" was fighting back. She threw me on the ground.

Read Crunkonia's entire piece at the Crunk Feminist Collective.

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