a legacy of strength

these past few weeks have been kinda hard for me emotionally...i know i can be sensitive at times but those are my personal times that i keep to myself...i dont like for people to see me cry...i feel its a sign of weakness and ive always been the one in my family that kept it together when the shit hit the fan...im not a panicer or someone who freaks out...things my mother and her mother taught me at an early age..."be strong" they would say..."keep it together sweetie"...or "the women are the heartbeat of the family" meaning never let them (your family) see you beating at a weak pace because then they themselves may lose hope and give up or give in...ive never seen my grandmother cry and she was a revolutionary in her own right...coming from the civil rights era she taught me about the "white man" and the "cracker"...introduced to me a love of black exploitation movies like "Cleopatra Jones" and "Coffy"...stories of strong black woman who stood up and fought for what they believed in...and for my mother...ive only seen her cry twice...once when i was little and we got evicted and the other when she saw her mother laying in her soft purple colored casket for the first time...even then her tears didnt last long but i know she had her moment in private when she let her emotions get the best of her...so with all this i had no choice but to keep my emotions to my self...it upsets me more to share those sad emotions with an audience then to spill open my heart to a presence that knows exactly where the emotion is coming from...which is deep inside my soul