She Belongs

Usually, I’m prompt to write in my children’s journal based on something they’ve done or said, but this time, a photo of my baby girl was the source of inspiration.

In the photograph, she is about three years old. Her hand is under her chin, she is staring directly into the camera and her hair is big and free and curly. The clarity of the white and the power of the black of her eyes pull me to pause.

I looked intently into her eyes, and it conjured a thought: you BELONG.

When I was seven months pregnant with Zahara, I was driving home from work when a young man, on his phone, drove full speed into the back of my car. The car spun in the road, into oncoming traffic, and a pickup truck hit my car on the other side – totaling it. I was hit twice. When the car stopped spinning, I held my belly and prayed my baby was alive. A heat of sorts pooled on the right side of my face and crawled across my forehead. When I reached up to touch my forehead, it was soft and protruding. It felt as if all of a sudden, my forehead was pregnant with blood. I blacked out.

I was roused to consciousness by the sirens, and two EMTs on either side of me talking, while an IV drip into my arm. My right eye was completely close by the pool of blood that had settled on that side of my face. My back was hurting on the stretcher, so I tried to shift my body and realized I was too heavy and stiff. I couldn’t move.

Doctors, nurses, family, and grape Jello aided me.
I was observed for the night, then was sent home to rest and heal with one working eye and a baby that was still fighting inside of me to live.

I knew then that this little girl, BELONGED here. Zahara is a fighter, a philosopher, a deep thinker. – She is the child who asked about the women in the bible and questioned the gender of God when she was only six years old.

Zahara BELONGS here.
She belongs in her brown skin,
in her height that surpasses those in her age group, her sparkling eyes that invites you, and her smile that comes only from a genuine space.
She belongs in her questions, her quick wit, and her desires.
She belongs in the places where she feels both unwelcome and embraced.
She was called into being and therefore, she belongs in the spaces she exists.