Lisa

Lisa,
I love you. I have loved you from the moment you existed. Being your mother has been a great joy of my life.
My precious girl. There are so many things I wish I could tell you. So many things about my love for you that I wish you understood. I wish I could see you again and explain myself with this greater sense of clarity I’ve gained in these last months. I will express as much as I can to you here, so that you may know and live your life with the regret I have.


Through your life you will have many dreams. And though you may want them more than anything and be well prepared, you may not get them. As a black woman in the country you have chosen to remain in, you will be stepped on and pushed aside and forced to be what the white man wants. You must try to resist this. Your resistance will likely fail. Resist it anyway. Another movement for civil rights will come and when it does our resistance to their pressures is the only thing that will give us air, a chance to breathe, real freedom. Real freedom is what you must always be fighting for. Your music will bring you close to feeling it, but it can never give you the full thing. Always remember you are striving for full freedom, without compromise.


This next part is harder to say. Lisa, my girl, my love for you hasn’t always been easy. I love you so much. Always always. Even in our time in Africa, I had the most love for you. I know it doesn’t seem that way. My love was hard and it was brutal. I’d like to say that it was created from a mix of what I received from your father and a darkness that had already started to cloud my mind. That doesn’t make it right. I know that. My sweet Lisa, I am sorry for that.


Lastly, I must tell you to dream. Despite what I have done and failed to do, my dreams are the only things that kept me going. At the worst times in the United States, I survived, I fought, in my mind I was still a classical pianist. I never forgot what I was. Remember your dreams Lisa. They will raise you up when those men attempt to drag you down. Live your life your way Lisa.
Freely,

Mother

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