Reclaiming my Self Love

By. Marian Yesufu

“Avoid men and crowded places like your boyfriend’s heart.”

                                                                                             —Milie Odhiambo, Kenyan Politician

Introduction

        As an artist, the joy of merging scholarly writing and creative writing is what I am developing through this performance-based scholarly narrative. Pulling from journals, recorded audio journals, plays, and music written by me—and folding them into the works that scholars have left behind—has been immensely rewarding. Crenshaw (1989) asserts that the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism; any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular ways in which Black women are subordinated (p. 140). This paper is written in the same spirit as I hope my dissertation will be: bringing the intersections of my experience to find understanding around healing and centering Black women in our journeys to self love by first decentering romantic love.

Storytime: Marriage Nah

        I never grew up imagining what my wedding would be like. I never imagined myself in the white puffy wedding dress. I never imagined nor prayed for a husband. I was famous in my friend group for saying, “I can’t wait to be 45.” I even said, “I can’t wait to be a lawyer, a director, and an actor.” Never once did I imagine being someone’s wife.

        My mother planted seeds of career aspirations and of enjoying life. Perhaps teaching, as we are a family of teachers. My mother prayed often for her husband, my rascal father. She told me once why she loved him. It was never because of an action he had done. More so, it was through an altruistic lens: that a higher being required her to learn how to love a human she had chosen to procreate with and be in union with. My father also never spoke of me and marriage in the same sentence. He knew I was a rascal from the start. hooks (2001) asserts, “To truly love, we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication” (p. 5). If I never tell you you’ve harmed me, and in what ways, how can we break bread? How can I possibly hear, eat  or build with you?

         Who whispered the ideals of romantic partnership into my quiet heart? Good ol’ American consumerism. I love films. It’s why I act and write. It’s why I ultimately went to film school. Films like The Wedding Planner, Cinderella, Never Been Kissed, and Two Can Play That Game were my Achilles’ heel—the four horsemen of romantic apocalyptic film comedy. JLo, Drew Barrymore, Gabrielle Union, and Cinderella discombobulated a perfectly formed African baby feminist into a gullible lover of romance. Unconsciously, they were my fairy godmothers of romantic love. I listened to them like an assailant listens to their attorney.

         Did I once pay attention to what my mother said about the same thing? No. Only now do the whispers, the sighs, her life as an example, make sense. She left a map, but I was too blind to see it. Every Black woman of the past, seeking to do no harm but emancipate our hearts and minds, has always left a map behind. My mother always said: my boys need wives, and my girls just need to love themselves.

Where did I miss the exit? It took me 40 years to get back on track: forty years of broken hearts, one husband, two beautiful children, and an emptying of a happy spirit still longing for peace, joy, and romantic love. With the realization that in order to sit in romantic love, one would have to radically love themselves to an epic proportion. Lorde (1984) reminds us, “If I didn’t define myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

     Divesting from romantic love completely has freed me. Wilderson (2020) states that Black death functions as natural therapy for society at large. I use this same indictment but instead of Black death, I suggest that Black women in failed romantic relationships serve as natural therapy for society. We are at the intersection of multiple things society blames us for: single motherhood, poverty, food stamps—the list goes on. Society loves to emulate us and hate us at the same time. As I relinquish the hold you have on me, I set my blood pressure back to equilibrium, my nervous system back to roses and petals, my cervix into a non-threatening harboring space where fibroids make themselves at home. I say this prayer like any Yoruba aje, binding it in perpetuity—for my womb and for those of other women who come after me. PBS NewsHour (2024) reminds us that 60 years ago, Fannie Lou Hamer rattled the Democratic convention with her “Is this America?” Hamer’s activism exposed systemic abuses against Black women, including forced sterilization practices sometimes called “Mississippi appendectomy.” May Hamer look down upon this prayer and every Black woman who has been sterilized in any supremacist country, and release the burden.

          Deciding to be in partnership only when radical self-love has carved out a new way of being enables the ability to walk away from harm, kill the urge to people-please, and release the compulsion to over-explain a “no.” These are the lemons I have juggled in trying to find a topic, research question, and methodology. For a radical, dark-skinned, West African reborn as a proud African American live-stage performer, mother, and teacher, a performance-based scholarly personal narrative was the only way to go.

Why a Performance-Based Scholarly Personal Narrative?

         Exploring the tactics utilized in anti-lynching plays opened new pathways for my dissertation. As a performance-based scholar-practitioner performing live on stage one to two nights a week, I was also paying attention to the pulse of my work. I walk in the body of a dark-skinned Black woman. One would not know I was also Yoruba unless I wore my accent and spoke my language. As I gather my strands of work, one thing is clear: how can centering oneself help others? hooks (2001) reminds us, When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect (pp. 93–94). If in choosing radical self-love an opportunity for a stronger community can emerge, then I choose this work. Healing, self-love, and decentering romantic love became central to my purpose.

Research Question

RQ1: How can dark-skinned Black American women, through an intersectional lens, redefine and contextualize romantic love in contrast to self-love as a pathway toward healing and joy?

RQ2 (optional): How can dark-skinned Black American women, through an intersectional lens, decenter romantic love and radically center self-love as a pathway toward healing and joy? I’m leaning more into this one.

Theoretical Framework

        I have selected Crenshaw’s intersectionality and Black feminist theory as the theoretical frameworks for my study. As a Black woman interrogating my lived experiences with romantic love and self-love, these frameworks form the bedrock of my research. They are embedded in every journal, song, and poem woven into this performance-based scholarly narrative. From Collins, to hooks, to Crenshaw, to Lorde, to Stewart, Black women in academia have helped ground my research in a self-affirming way while also passing the torch. Collins (2009) writes in Black Feminist Thought, Chapter 7: “So you protected yourself by picking the smallest star. To get to a place where you could love anything…now that is power.” This chapter, near the end of the book, signals to future scholar-practitioners hungry for self-enlightenment that self-love comes even after we take care of everyone else. Crenshaw (1991) emphasizes that recognizing the ways race, gender, and other axes of power interact is essential for empowering women of color and addressing the full range of their experiences (p. 1245). Lorde (1988) reminds us, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” My self love is maybe troublesome to you, but it is a battle cry to me.

As a Mother

What does mothering and self-love have to do with one another? I sit here burying the harm done to my 5-year-old daughter, the harm done by other five-year-olds. Why must she carry this socially constructed grief?

“I don’t want to be brown. I’m not Black. My friends at school gave candy only to the white kids.”

She goes to a school with 98% Latinos who present as white. She says, “Mama, I don’t want to go to school. My teachers are not nice. I don’t have any friends.”

Crenshaw (1991) reminds us, “The failure to consider intersectional identities frequently erases Black and brown women’s experiences of violence” (p. 1242). I feel this as an African girl turned too quickly into an adult in American schools. Adultification of Black girls comes at the expense of young Black girls, putting to rest youth and innocence only to wear a mask of a young mammy. I feel transported back to elementary school, yet it is 2025, and I am 40—raising my 40-year-old self, an 18-year-old Son, and a 5-year-old daughter. Baldwin once said, “To be Black is to be angry all the time.” What of the Black mother? Charged with raising the community, her child, and herself, she reckons with this truth every day.

Why is it always patriarchy’s fault?

          It’s 5:30 p.m. in London Heathrow. Rows have been established for border control. The world is in recession, and my personhood will be spending money in your country. You’re welcome? Nah. My global passport screams capitalism and patriarchy. I hold a U.S. passport. Gates open. As a single, passing person, I am simply an American single Black woman passing through. I observe a white father and son. The father unconsciously teaches patriarchy: “Come on, son. Your mum will figure it out.” The father continues walking. The son returns to check on his mother. This small act of defiance illuminates the subtle perpetuation and potential disruption of patriarchy. hooks (2001) affirms, “Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation…are the foundation of love” (p. 27). The sons small act is something we can all do.

Data Collection and Interpretation

          My data are my audio recordings, journals, scripts, and plays. Pulling them together into a single repository has helped bring them to life and made me less precious about them. Audio and video journals reveal stages of understanding that differ from my written records, providing a layered, nuanced perspective for analysis.

Ethical Considerations

       These are my stories. I reference myself and use pseudonyms for others. SPNs interrogate one’s own actions and behaviors. Breaks, therapy, and physical self-care are mandatory, given the intellectual and spiritual labor involved.

Radical Self-Love and Healing

       Radical self-love and spirit are inseparable for Black women. Terms like life force, generative, soul ties, embrace bitch and selfish and bad mom and bad wife title, and murder and bury the good girl fallacy articulate the ongoing work of reclaiming autonomy.

Lorde (1984) writes, “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” I have no choice but to write and speak so my oppressor cannot assume I enjoy the harm being done to me. I am allergic to centering myself; my body breaks out in hives when I examine the why. I am the “bad guy” in my own story. Society has taught me to be ashamed of me. And I look forward to giving myself tools to shift that.

Conclusion: Healing and Black Women

         Stewart (2025) shows us that #BlackGirlMagic is real—it lives in the fabric of Black mammy, the quilt, the original midwife, the Yoruba aje, the Orisha Osun, and the aunties. These bodies of work have unleashed the phoenix in me. And though it is healing, it scares me. The performance tunnel is riddled with pain, joy, work, and resistance. It is minding our Black woman business while saving ourselves from others’ unconscious denigration. If the status quo says, “Yes, you can denigrate her,” it is my job to assassinate this claim. Rosenberg gives tools for nonviolent communication, and Adrienne Marie gifts us with  pleasure activism. Stewart (2025) reminds us, “Even in the bleakest of times, power never lies solely in the hands of those who would oppress us.” Through radical self-love, performance, and scholarship, I center Black women, dismantle objectification, and reclaim joy, power, and freedom.

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!”      

- Sojourner Truth