Ijeoma Umebinyuo Quotes

So, here you are too foreign for home too foreign for here. Never enough for both.

Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are, with what you have. Just... start.

1. You must let the pain visit. 2. You must allow it teach you 3. You must not allow it overstay. (Three routes to healing)

I am too full of life to be half-loved.

Stay away from men who peel the skin of other women, forcing you to wear them.

So many broken children living in grown bodies mimicking adult lives.

Do not drown yourself in a man. He will leave you struggling to breathe.

Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks and that's ok, that's ok, darling you are still healing you are still healing.

The day your education makes you roll your eyes at your father. The day your exposure makes you call your own mother uncivilized, the day your amazing foreign degrees make you cringe as your driver speaks pidgin english, may you never forget your grandfather was a farmer from Oyo state who never understood english.

You did not carry yourself away from pain to become pain itself.

IRONY They invite you to come view artifacts stolen from your ancestors in their museums as their "experts" explain your ancient Benin kingdom

Mother, I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly. Some nights, your daughter tears herself apart yet heals in the morning.

Nobody warned you that the women whose feet you cut from running would give birth to daughters with wings.

do not apologize for owning every piece of you they could not take, break, and claim as theirs.

I told the priest my god is a black woman he poured holy water on me and scheduled me for an exorcism

there are ways to let the world kill you. first, lose your tongue in the mouth of a lover. second, do not remember your softness.

You teach your daughters how to rub poison on their skin remember to teach your sons how not to be serpents.

Here’s to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here’s to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here’s to the janitors who don’t understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here’s to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here’s to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here’s to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here’s to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here’s to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here’s to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here’s to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on.

The problem was you kept waiting for another to call you powerful. You naively believed men like him were capable of loving women who make crowns for thorns. The problem was You loved him so shamelessly, even his lies became holy.

I tell you sometimes the moon is too weak to be full.

i want to write about women who pray for me in a language so beautiful english will bow.

forcing manhood on boys with skin still made of silk and mother's love is cruel

Daughters do not have to inherit the silence of their mothers.

The white feminist becomes the CEO. The black feminist becomes the exiled rebel. The white feminist speaks about teaching literacy like i should thank her, hold her hand, kiss her for teaching children of darker skin. The black feminist should be grateful. The black feminist wears her natural hair, she is called ‘too rebellious’. The white feminist cuts her hair, she is brave. The white feminist gets featured on TIME. The black feminist is the fine print.

Invisible She scanned through the magazine for girls who looked like her with deeper hues, flat nose, and thick hair. The day she turned fifteen she scrubbed herself with bleach while screaming for God, whispering over and over again "the darker the skin, the deeper the struggle" releasing a sigh that made her soul shake.

The woman carried herself like God worshipped her body. Even the devil will pray for her forgiveness at the holy sight of her.

this body has carried herself into days so bitter all gods wept. Yet, I am still here and I will always be here.

I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly.

Survive ... Some women survive by creating walls, big walls guarding their hearts and you say "let them in" but she has been covered in regrets, crawled on all fours for her salvation. Dont curse them for when her attacker came there she was, loving, now she has built her walls brick by brick guarding against parasites Don't blame her Some women are broken, not ready to be healed, some women are broken not ready for love and that's all right. Let her find herself Let her become her own sun Let her

twice broken, three times more powerful.

my love has been known to perform miracles.

I curated our love into poems and all the pains became less all the anger left, eventually but, there is no denying here on the tip of my soul with scars still healing, that once I loved a man.

I am too full of life to be half-loved.

Beneath it all I know you are made of soft wind and calm flowing water but on days when you become strong wind and crashing waves be rest assured you did not become less of you do not become the woman apologizing for days when she has thorns from the harshness of the world.

Stop the idea that a woman’s beauty is for a man’s gaze, that you have the right to touch her. This idea that she must smile and accept unwanted approaches even when she is clearly uncomfortable. Just because you call a woman beautiful does not mean you have the right to behave like her beauty belongs to you. There are women healing from scars gotten from men who have called them beautiful yet offered them pain. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone. There are triggers for some women, respect this and know this. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone

Forgive me father, but sometimes my God is a woman sitting on the kitchen floor her hands holding her legs screaming for help without making a sound. Forgive me father but sometimes my God is a woman calling me on the phone begging me to call her "beautiful" because her lover forced ugliness into her soul. Forgive me father but sometimes my God is a woman crying in the shower begging for another God to lift her burden.

Like you, I am tired of waking up to news of death.

Naked before my eyes, I thank whatever Gods created your ancestors.

this is how his love like music makes my soul dance.

You apologize for how you carry your mother's loneliness quietly between your teeth. You apologize for how you carry your father's sins inside your blood. You forgot how to carry yourself away for the histories that threatens to break you open, leaving you with grief and unbearable weight of emptiness. Tell me, apart from the sadness thick as smog living inside your chest tell me the last time you held your face and saw love staring back at you. How does destroying yourself prove your worth to others?

I have always wondered how women who carry war inside their bones still grow flowers between their teeth.

La beauté d'une femme appartient à elle seule.

you desecrated the shrines of our fathers you pushed our tongue, stole our culture paraded your wickedness as my savior you refused the right to let me own my narrative you butchered our names you brought war on our land you call my people "savages" you stole our histories and wear them proudly in your museums you wash away our achievements you carry it as yours you "discovered" what was already mine you plant puppets, assassinating our leaders you desecrated the shrines of my mothers when we worshipped nature, you laughed at us now, you want to carry our ways, learn from us we refuse to write softness into our stories for you to feel comfortable we refuse to let anyone but us own our narrative we refuse to believe your lies again you will not spit in the face of our fathers and think his children will now sit quietly.

The day your education makes you roll your eyes at your father. The day your exposure makes you call your own mother uncivilized, the day your amazing foreign degrees make you cringe as your driver speaks pidgin english, may you never forget your grandfather was a farmer from Oyo state who never understood english.

where does politics end  and your love poems begin? sometimes, they are both the same thing sometimes, they have to be the same thing.

Stop the idea that a woman’s beauty is for a man’s gaze, that you have the right to touch her. This idea that she must smile and accept unwanted approaches even when she is clearly uncomfortable. Just because you call a woman beautiful does not mean you have the right to behave like her beauty belongs to you. There are women healing from scars gotten from men who have called them beautiful yet offered them pain. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone. There are triggers for some women, respect this and know this. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone.

America, while you were asleep another woman mourned her dead black lover’s bullet-ridden body, as his baby cried for her father’s life.

Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo says, “You must let the pain visit. You must allow it to teach you. You must not allow it to overstay.

You began to love all the women inside you and you began to nurse her back into life without apologizing for how she heals herself.