The Heart of a Woman

For a few years seeing that book in my mother-in-law's house, I found it disinteresting, sometimes weighing on me as if I knew how I would react to whatever I was reacting to. I didn't know the book's content outside of it being the fourth edition of her biography. I only knew that I wasn't called to read it. Not yet.

I finished reading Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman. I took about 3 weeks to read it cover to cover, and in those three weeks, I was eager to get to the next page and the next chapter.

I kept wondering about the point of the book, some parts of her story were boring to read, and I don't think she is a phenomenal writer.

She is descriptive, creative with her words, and finds unique ways to depict people's features urging the reader to really take the time to draw out each individual in their imagination and giving the reader a chance to experience her first impressions and the factors creating those impressions.

Her style of writing, the way she thinks, and the things she feels make her feel real. As though one of the older women in my community wrote a memoir about a certain period in their life, giving the reader, especially of my generation, the once-unknown particulars of her time to aid us in imagining her experiences.

I pictured myself being an adult in the 1960s, moulded by the years before. My senses were triggered and my heart reacted to each moment she led me into. My world had disappeared and I was a black American woman. My emotions were hijacked, preached to, caressed, left alone, guilty, shameful, brave, angry, spiteful, in lust, in love, unsure, in deep despair, in deep memory, in unconditional love, in wanting, in dreaming, in wishing, in building, in independence, in disappointment, and in trust.

My physical senses shut off, my imagination being my only experience. I was inspired and had realizations. Maya Angelou's honesty stayed with me.

"I need adventure in my life," I said to myself.

"What adventure? And how do you know you haven't had it yet?" I asked myself.

I found the love of my life - Mogale, my parents passed and I was abandoned and thrown out of two homes by both my parents' families all at the age of 16.

Got pregnant at 17 while living with my partner and his mom. He was 18 and we were beyond broke and waited until I was 4 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days pregnant before we terminated the pregnancy. Baby's name was Kganya meaning light and blessings in Sepedi, given by his grandmother, Mogale's mother. I was pale and weighed less than 50kg with pregnancy brain and mind fog, trauma, grief, and sadness from, at the time, my very recent past. The termination stayed with all three of us and we promised each other never to do it again.

My partner and I built his music career and took care of his then deeply depressed and ill mother who was forced to work for free at her job because she had been absent for months and her proof wasn't enough to convince them of her condition.

We took care of each other and had a lot of dark days without food and money. We spent days and nights shooting music videos, building his online presence, reaching out to music labels, pitching to TV and radio platforms for airplay, and I would watch him produce his instrumentals and write his lyrics.

I would listen, he would ask for feedback, and we would talk for hours about the philosophies of his lyrics and how they show up in our reality.

We have always made a powerful synonymous team.

We made plans to get out of poverty and support all of our families financially, the plans failed one after the other but they still got us closer to figuring it out, even when it didn't feel like it.

Now we have a baby girl and we make ends meet somehow. The dark days go by and we laugh every day. We continue to build a life together and make even more plans to get out of poverty and float right into our dream life where our families are financially comfortable to live their lives as they wish.

What adventure do I still want? The list is huge and ever-changing.

What adventure am I going to get? Me writing this right now, and continuing to write more pieces in the future gives me faith that I am going to love my life, no matter what.

Maya Angelou's book gave me that sense - she loved her life. Having had two husbands, an ex-fiance who was honestly a bullet dodged, a son who was described as rebellious on the back cover but sounded headstrong and beautifully black and masculine in the book, reliable friendships, romantic and sensual considerations and descriptions of the males she came across, her ability to jump from industry to industry and land a job anywhere in the world she finds an acquaintance, her desire for companionship as a single mother, with her South African freedom fighter husband repeatedly disappointing the security she thought she had as a taken-care of wife, her needing to find comfort and strength in being a sassy, independent boundless black American woman who is only at the mercy of her will.

She feels brave and bare.

She feels attainable as a role model.

She feels real to my reality.

She also feels like she lived a dream come true.

Yet in how I am experiencing my own life, I don't think she felt like she lived a dream come true from dull to mundane moment unless she was in the throws of a monumental happening.

In reading about her experiences, I am reminded of the necessary discomforts some happenings bring and how reacting naturally to your personality is what creates memorable memories. Memories that remind us of the people we want to become and the stances that reside peacefully with our core character.

It seems communities were popping up anywhere a group of people felt a cause. The many organisations striving for freedom, the Harlem Writer's Guild, the Arab Observer, the women's league making a statement with black sheaths at the U.N, Buddy who helped her survive a nearly fatal failed rescue mission for a friend who had found his way out just as she and the stranger, Buddy, snuck into a building guarded by white lawmen, the palaver made up of African couples that considered themselves family to Maya in a strange country who held an intervention for her dying marriage, the many lunches, dinners, and parties made just for socialising with mutual connections, their spouses, and colleagues, and the friendships born out of needing a helping hand, solidifying her relationships as reliable and reciprocal. She made herself available to so many and the communities grew to become notable, growing her enviable reputation.

Maya is relentless and iron-willed.

Making her way in places that don't give way.

Loving her son and being an imperfect mother just as any mother.

I may not read this book cover to cover again, but I will be looking to use it as a reminder of never being the only one with a Heart of a Woman.