Black Women, Black Single-Parent Women, Have Been Carrying ‘Survival’ in the Body

Part 1

Black single motherhood is the visible fruit of many roots historical family rupture, economic instability, mass incarceration, lower marriage formation, cultural shifts, sexual irresponsibility, male abandonment, and sometimes women making survival decisions in the aftermath of betrayal or abuse.

But the mother is too often made the public symbol of a crisis she did not create alone.

She needs support, not scorn.

Her children need healing, not stigma.

Fathers need to be called back to responsibility, presence, and honor.

Communities and Churches need to stop merely criticizing broken families and begin strengthening, mentoring, providing, and standing in the gap.

Because when a mother is left to carry everything alone, it is not just her private hardship it becomes a generational wound society will eventually feel…

Part 2

When we speak about the realities of Black single mothers, we must talk about more than finances, parenting, and social stigma.

We must also speak about what this weight can do to the Body.

Many Black single mothers are carrying children, households, bills, emotional labor, unanswered questions, abandonment wounds, racialized stress, workplace pressure, and the silent grief of having to be both nurturer and provider often while being criticized for a role they did not choose.

Not every illness is trauma-based, and conditions such as fibroids, ovarian cysts, PCOS, endometriosis, and reproductive cancers are medically complex.

But we cannot ignore what research continues to reveal: chronic stress and racial discrimination are associated with cumulative biological wear and tear in black women, often described as Allostatic Load — the body’s prolonged stress burden.

Black women have not merely been “coping.”

Many have been literally surviving in their nervous systems, their hormones, their blood pressure, their sleep, and yes even in their wombs.

Studies show that Black women are disproportionately affected by uterine fibroids, they are more likely to develop them, often at younger ages, with more severe symptoms.

Research has also found an association between perceived racial discrimination and increased fibroid risk among Black women.

The body is not untouched by years of carrying the financial load alone, raising emotionally wounded children, navigating disappointment and betrayal, suppressing exhaustion because there is no one else to step in, showing up for everyone while privately falling apart.

Some women are not merely emotionally tired.  They are biologically overburdened.Their bodies have been paying bills society refuses to acknowledge.

This is why we must stop discussing Black women’s pain as though it is only emotional or social.

The body keeps account of prolonged burden.

The womb should not be treated as though it is disconnected from years of sorrow, stress, neglect, and survival.

We need more honest conversations.

More compassionate healthcare — earlier diagnosis — better research — trauma-informed care.

And far less condemnation of women who have been carrying loads society helped place upon them.

Black women are not “too strong to break.”

Many have simply been denied the space to fall apart.

It is time to stop praising their endurance while ignoring their suffering. It is time to care for the whole woman spirit, soul, and body..

 

Shalom
~ Syreeta Thomas

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Syreeta Thomas

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