RECIPE FOR RESILIENCE

by Lady Caress

“Deep down in the water black sons and daughter
All bounced back”

The recipe for resilience
Is a knock down
Followed by a bounce back
Newsflash that’s also the recipe for being black
We cannot sugar coat the bitter truth of a nation:
The setback of slavery
setup emancipation
Juneteenth is now a celebration
reminding us to fear not our differences but embrace them
We’ve been the fabric of this nation
Thread into the Foundation
But those fields of cotton
Are frequently forgotten
Off of our backs
Built from scratch
Held our tongue
Covered our tracks
But no fear
We’re still here
Cuz black bounced back

“Deep down in the water black sons and daughter
All bounced back”

From the music you listen to
To the food you eat
We are the salt and pepper in your palette and the bounce in your beat
We are the sadness in your blues
Green yellow and red light you stop at if you choose
Well we invented that in 1922
We found power in our pain
Learned what our words could do
Pushed back through the pens of
James Baldwin and Maya Anjelou
We learned to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee
Take a licking
Keep ticking
Bob and weave
Like Ali
George Washington carver turned peanuts into paint and paper
And since the beginning of time Black folk give anything bland some flavor

You wanna talk about influence,
My man James Brown, takes the crown
Had white folk across the country getting down
saying it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
Wow
To be black means you are no stranger to
Toughness
roughness
or trauma
You just Leap through it like Lebron
And lead like Obama
We are a people proud of our melanin
Trouble ain’t got nothing on our thick skin
When we get knocked down we just get up again
And that’s the recipe for resilience.

Before I forget please join me in congratulating
Potato chips and beer on tap
We deserve a round of applause for inventing that
From medical and engineering to fun and fashion
We’ve met adversity every single time with passion
Ideas become reality when we have the freedom to dream
That is what we celebrate on June 16th.

“Deep down in the water black sons and daughter
All bounced back”