Always with Lemon

I watched my mother cup of tea a cup of tea. Everyday. Always with lemon.

Sometimes she had real lemons. More often than not, it was lemon juice from concentrate.

There wasn’t any luxury in it. No fanfare. Nowadays, those moments could be captured for mindfulness and healing content. For her, it was just a simple intention.

Studying her taught me early that survival doesn’t always mean pushing through. Sometimes it means claiming a moment for yourself so you can stay present for the people depending on you.

I watched the women in my life gather. Multiply themselves. Holding family. Holding community. Holding each other.

Without theory, counter-narratives have shaped our survival. A prime example is how the women who built the National Association of Colored Women served under the Lifting as We Climb motto.

See, survival was never individual. It was collective.

These are lessons I learned before leadership courses. Before professional development. Before any framework tried to name it.

No matter the conditions, they purposefully curated environments of care, ingenuity, and survival.

It’s what Barbara Sizemore understood when she insisted that Black life be centered as it actually exists. Marginalized. Maligned. Targeted. Yet worthy—and intrinsically mandated—all the same. Our ways, undiluted, are the blueprint.

This is the invisible labor that made room for me.The tradition of tending so that others can stand. All while holding the weight of Gwendolyn Brooks’ reminder: we are each other’s harvest. we are each other’s business. we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

So tell me, who taught you how to survive before you had language for it”?