Do Broken Crayons Still Color?

The nightmares invaded my sleep in three battalions. 

Each dream strategically struck at a spoke in the trinity of my fears – abuse, abandonment, and betrayal. I texted a friend after waking from each terror, briefly described the dream, and concluded with the same reassurance. 

“I will think happy thoughts and go back to sleep,” I said. Then, embarrassed that my texts sounded like a whiny child, I deleted the texts and returned to sleep. 

Awakening to anxiety 

I recognized the nighttime raiders for who they were – anxiety dreams. 

Smothering the anxiety in moisturizer the next morning, I appeared on a LinkedIn Live event to promote a speaker series I’m appearing in as a featured participant. 

It wasn’t a fear of public speaking that caused the internal dread and nightmares. Instead, I was afraid to return to North Carolina – a place that represented both great growth and tremendous pain. 

Unlike today, most middle-class Black professionals at the time didn’t talk about the racism they endured in the workplace with the lightning fluidity younger generations now take for granted. Many of my peers and I played respectability politics in the “New South.” In the worst cases, I betrayed myself for things that no longer matter.

I returned to North Carolina a few times since moving to Mexico seven years ago. However, this time felt different because I needed to make decisions affecting the future of my film production company, retrieve my Grandma Lula’s cremated remains, and toss the “just in case” contents of my rental storage unit.

Shifting realities 

In three months, I will reach the half-century mark.

Turning 50 is no big deal to those who have surpassed the birthday milestone. Many women emerge like butterflies from the chrysalis during and after their fifth decade. Nevertheless, my upcoming birthday catalyzed serious reflections about how I want to live my life, where I want to live it, and how abundance comes and flows through me. 

Searching for my next adventure, I visited the San Francisco Bay Area four times since last fall. I love its vibrancy, convenience, and diversity. One can drive one hour north, and luxurious, rolling hills surround them. Drive further north along the coast to visit the dizzying cliffs that tumble to the frigid and dark Pacific Ocean or the august redwoods whose tops you crane your neck until it threatens to crack to see. 

While I have many friends in the Bay Area, none know who I “was.” They only know the version of me now who shivers in 60-degree weather and casually chats in Spanish with restaurant servers and flower shop clerks. But no one knows what it took to become her.

Coloring new dreams

Burrowed underneath the leaf pile of mid-life questions is an essential one: “Do I have the courage to show up as me, moment to moment, learn, and grow? 

Embodying this type of courage means accepting my flaws as much as I appreciate my strengths. It also means taking stock of what I’m doing well, the places where I am failing, and being creative about making changes or letting things be. 

A few weeks ago, I sent the famous Hemingway quote to a friend grappling with grief: “We are all broken. That’s how the light comes in.”

I am rethinking my relationship to “brokenness.” I often said, “the world is broken, but we are not.” This is not to dismiss our traumatic experiences. Sometimes, however, people create a shrine to their trauma and claim it as their identity.

“I am this way because…,” they might say. Or, “that’s just the way I am.” If we allow our wounds to define us, we make decisions from shattered and scared places. Defining ourselves by our broken places also robs us of our agency to release the past, accept the present, and imagine a future that might be more generative.

When I remember my ability to reframe my life, I understand that the deliciousness I seek during this next act of life is infused with magic and light. This isn’t a form of spiritual bypassing or denial. However, I refuse to let my past wear me down to the white meat of my flesh and bone. It’s time to let it go.

The revolutionary act of release allows the magic and light in. I no longer strive to experience Black joy. I want to be Black-sourced joy for Black and brown communities through storytelling.

Where are the places of magic and light inside you? Are you willing to live them boldly? What kind of support will help you tap your sources of magic and light? What kind of world could we create if we stopped defining ourselves as broken crayons and started imaging our world and experiences as a grand masterpiece?