Speaking through my own voice, I'm a recovering and born again appreciator of African women. Its not that I ever did anything to not appreciate African women. My wonderful daughter is the product of my early marriage to an African woman that I have spent the last several years co-parenting my daughter with. For me, I've diagnosed that I really took a hard life fall several years ago that really required me to spend a lot of time rebuilding myself. In the course of that, I realize I convinced myself, somehow, that I didn't qualify for the African woman I would have wanted. That I wouldn't qualify. That's my dysfunctional story and I take full responsibility for it. Its only been the previous year and a half that I've had time to think through this dysfunction. I've made a lot of changes and consequently, a magnificent thing happened for me, but the point here isn't to talk about my personal life.
I want to make the point that despite my struggles over the years, I found myself struggling over the loss of an important person this past weekend. Someone who I hadn't had much contact with over the last several years, but who had quite an impact on me in my developing years. As is typically the case when death happens in this scenario, you are hit hard by the realities of what you had with that person that can never happen again. Here, this past weekend, I was fortunate to be consoled by the wonderful African woman in my life who never knew this person lost, but she knows me. And, she wants to support me. And, she did in a way that I just hadn't experienced in quite some time.
This doesn't need to be a long artticle/post because the thesis is simple. For every African man out there who is claiming African women aren't loyal. They aren't honest. They aren't good enough. Whatever the dysfunction. All I'm saying is if you handle yourself with honesty, integrity, bravery, and selflessness, there are more than enough African women who have always historically been willing to step up to the plate and meet your effort with an equal amount of all of those principles and more. And, this is true despite the undeniable truth that we as men do not have a stacked resume of accomplishments with our sisters to justify that level of commitment from them, yet they are here, waiting for us.
None of this is to say that any of us are perfect. Of course, there are African women out here who behave in reprehensible ways. Still, by the numbers, if you as a man do all of the above that I mentioned, that sister is out here for you. I mean, its not like European women with integrity are just knocking your door down left and right. In other words, for every African woman you claim let you down, I'm sure that's universally true for all types of women because we seldom look in the mirror first to identify why things don't go the way we desire in our lives.
That's all I'm saying here. Love who makes you happy, but don't attack and/or reject African women on some insane dysfunctional level. Its time for us to stand in front of that mirror. Its time for us to approach our sisters with principles of integrity and justice. And, then I'm suggesting that we meet back here at a later date to discuss the results. I already know that most of us are going to come out in wonderful shape.