10 questions from Kim Jones (3 answers)

As a writing project for myself I asked a few people to send ten questions for me. The harder the questions the better. Any of you can participate. If you would like to, please send ten questions to jahazainabu@gmail.com. These are the questions from Kim Jones. So far I have answered three. The other answers are coming.

1. Why the name change?
2. What, if anything, has it cost you to be Jaha?
3. What is your lifelong dream?
4. If this world was yours and you could change anything, what would be first?
5. What is your deepest regret?
6. What are you most proud of?
7. What do you want everyone to know about you?
8. What or who inspires you? Why?
9. What is your relationship with Jesus?
10. What is the best thing that ever happened to or for you?

1. Why the name change?

I have always been looking for a way out of being called Robin Rachael Reed. Mostly I had issues with my middle name. It's pronounced Ra-shell but spelled Rachel. I don't know what it was but I never owned the name. In the sixth grade I went through spelling variations of my first name. Robynne, Robbin, Robinn. I settled on Robyn and that's who I was until about '91. For about a week I was Robbie. When I was at Grambling State University (go Tigers!) in '92 (or was that later in '91?) I was done with all of the variations of Robin and Jaha was born. It wasn't some religious experience. I wanted a name I wanted to answer to. A name I hadn't heard before. I saw the name in a book. It comes from Kenya. It means dignity. I wore Jaha like a sweater and it fit. I have always been Jaha. Always been looking for Jaha inside of Robin.

In '93 (or was it '92?) I got married. We didn't stay together long. Maybe a year. The relationship was hard on me emotionally. I lived most of it not fully expressing who I was, how I felt, not living into my dream. That wasn't Jaha. There was no dignity in the life I was living. Funny because he was the man I was with when I became Jaha. The very moment. I had the book in my hand while he was with me.

I didn't want to be Jaha Reed but didn't have a last name. I was just kind of Jaha. Like Cher and Madonna. After we broke up I wanted a last name and found another book of African names. I wanted a name that could have belonged to my ancestors. I knew I would know it when I saw it. Zainabu. Zainabu is a girl's first name also from Kenya. It means beautiful. I never thought I was beautiful. I'm not being down on myself here. I always thought I had a unique look. I was cute enough. I was fly and cool enough. Not beautiful in a standard way though. Whatever that is. But my own kind of beautiful. So...Jaha Zainabu.

I'm still Robin Reed too though. Not to new people in my life but to some family, old friends, bill collectors and anybody who needs to write me a check. I never went through any period where I asked people to stop calling me Robin. Some people did though and sometimes it was awkward. I knew they were just trying to be respectful but Jaha was different from the Robin they knew. Really though, like I said, I was Jaha all along. Some people are weird about it and make too much of a thing. I have a cousin who literally calls me "Robin, because I just can't get down with the Jaha thing so I'm gonna call you Robin." Like, she says that whole sentence when she could just call me Robin because I never asked her to call me Jaha anyway. It does make me think though. What if I did want everyone to call me Jaha? What if it was that important to me? I feel for my trans friends who are not only called by names they don't choose to go by but are also addressed as genders they don't identify with all because some old friend or family member "can't get down with" their choice for themselves.

So really, I don't have a problem being called Robin by people who knew me as Robin. I don't like people who I introduced myself to as Jaha finding out my name and calling me Robin. I think they think that makes us closer. Like they know me as family. It doesn't make us closer. In fact, people who do this are usually people I don't dig that much. I dated a guy years ago who found out my name and TOLD me that he was going to call me Robin. NOPE! No you're not! Now, Shihan is a friend I've had for about twenty years and he is the host of a Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles and sometimes from the stage he calls me Double R to be funny. I don't mind that. Nobody even knows who he's talking about. Y'all get my point. Oh, and it's not a stage name either. I hate that. My uncle used to introduce me by saying "This is my niece, Robin. Her stage name is Jaha though." I was always like, dude, TMI. Whatever though. Family.

I guess, there you have it. That's how and why and when I became Jaha Zainabu.

8. What or who inspires you? Why?

I am often inspired by many things and people. I will answer this question with just one person though but know that she is not the only one. Toni Morrison was a great inspiration to me. She still is. Her physical death has not changed that. I cried when she died. My body was numb at the news. I felt like I lost someone very dear to me and nobody could tell me that wasn't true.

Living in L.A. I see people now grieving Kobe Bryant everyday. There are mourners in front of the many murals. Laker gear on every corner. People talking about him in coffeeshops. I did not have a connection with Kobe like that but I do understand how people who didn't even know him could be hurt by his passing. For my good money, there isn't a better writer than Toni Morrison. Reading her work makes me want to keep developing my craft as a writer. I am not the same kind of writer she was but her work reminds me and pushes me to keep working. Keep studying. Early last year I was in a pretty bad depressive episode. I used to watch her interviews on YouTube. There are many of them and I would watch them over and over. Her wisdom, courage, talent, humor was a big part of what got me through a very dark place.

One of my first boyfriends as an adult was a guy named Kevin. My son's father's name is also Kevin. Not him though. Another one. Kevin was a book smart brother from Dartmouth. We weren't together anymore but were still kind of cool. I had just come back from Grambling (a school he told me that he and his school friends used to talk badly about because HBCUs were not schools that...measured up.) Anyway, we had a very long conversation about black women writers. He sat in my mother's home and explained how black women writers hated black men. "Alice, Toni, all of them." I didn't have the fancy words he did but don't nobody sit on my mama couch talkin' 'bout Alice, Toni or none of them. So there was him and his whitewashed degreed speech and me and my dropout black woman writer self debating whether or not a black woman could be a writer and love black men and tell all the stories that we tell. Toni Morrison has addressed this many times way better than I did with Kevin. With all my poetic words I ended the conversation with a drawn out "Negro pleeeeese." But Toni, with her still composure and perfect eyebrows talked about being a black woman who did not forget the times black women were not treated like "Queens." She would not be a woman to ignore those stories to prove her love to black men.

I found my voice through her writing. She gave me freedom to tell my stories. To call the foul in my life. Gave me freedom to love. Showed me that love didn't hide behind a bandage. That healing happened in my telling. That the telling was a part of loving. She told me my voice and stories matter. I say told me because she was my teacher. We never met. I talked to her anyway. In my thoughts, my journals, sometimes out loud. Toni Morrison invites me to sit in dark and messy and scary rooms and dares me to write my way out knowing that only just the right phrase will unlock the door.

And then her son, Slade died in 2010 and that she didn't flush herself down her own toilet was enough to inspire me. She wrote more. She taught. She breathed. She stayed. You know, it's not just her books. And they are all masterpieces as far as I'm concerned. It was her. SHE was inspiring. She is inspiring. She asked a question during one of Oprah's life classes. "Does your face light up?" When our children enter a room and see us often what they see is criticism on our faces. It changed how I relate with my son. Even now, and my son is twenty-two. So, especially now. I want the black man I birthed to see my lit up face when I see him. He is met with criticism enough in the world.

I could talk about her all day. Toni Morrison was someone I never had to meet. I would have loved to but I didn't have to meet her for her to have the impact on my life that she did. What would I have said to her anyway? Deep sigh. Blessed Toni, Mother Morrison, Magic maker, Queen. I hope she is resting now. May her work live on forever.

10. What is the best thing that ever happened to or for you? 

The best thing that ever happened to me was being Uraeus's mother. I almost said that having him gave my life purpose but that's not true. My life had purpose and meaning before he was born. Before I was born too. But having him kept me focused. I truly believe I am on this planet now because Uraeus is here. 

I have lived through depressive episodes since early middle school. I thought about my death many times throughout high school. Never me killing myself though. My belief that suicide was an unforgivable sin was enough to deter me from that. Instead I fixated on how I could "accidentally" die. When I grew up, many of my beliefs changed and I no longer accepted that I would burn in hell forever for escaping the pain of heavy and unexplainable sadness landing on me for weeks at a time for no reason I could see. Back then, there was no universal conversation about mental illness. I had only heard the term Bipolar 1 maybe a few years before I was diagnosed and that was well into my adulthood.

I was twenty-eight when I had Uraeus. I was in love with him. I didn't know he was a boy when I was pregnant but it didn't matter. I loved the baby inside me. I had baby fever before he came and now I believe it was him calling to be in this world. I was happy to be pregnant. My external circumstances were rocky though. I wasn't sure about my relationship with his father. I had very little money. During the final stage of my pregnancy I had a job as a receptionist at some small company out in the valley and I knew I wasn't going to stay there. There was a lot going on but I was always happy with my baby. Even physically I was happy. Maybe happy is not the word. I was sick. But I was okay. Morning sickness was a problem. Sleeping was impossible. I was tired and cranky and teary and blah blah blah but a whole person was growing inside of me. So there. Also, for the first block of my life since the sixth grade I didn't have a menstrual cycle. And my cycles were pure d death. Every single month for seven or eight days. Heavy bleeding and frequent vomiting and crazy nausea. None of what I was experiencing during my pregnancy held a Dollar General candle to my monthly periods. Besides, I kind of liked the way my body was changing. I was always thin before I was pregnant. Thin was new. Growing up I was skinny. I liked my new breasts and thickness. 

Uraeus was a week late. That was according to the doctor. Babies come when they come. On November 14 after twelve hours of labor that felt just like my cramps and then a c section, Uraeus was here. I didn't know he was a boy until that day. My grandmother had a stroke while I was pregnant. While she was in hospital she went into a coma from which she never woke up. Before the coma though, I asked her if I was having a boy or a girl. She told me a girl. But then this boy showed up in my world and I was fine with that. 

His dad and I split up when Uraeus was six months old. I knew we weren't going to make it as a couple. I was glad though that we both deeply loved our son. I didn't know what to do or where to go and moved in abruptly with my mom and stepfather in Long Beach. I didn't do it in a cool way. I was just kind of there. So that was rocky. 

Postpartum depression, a disease I had heard of but thought only white women got, had hit me hard. As much as I loved my child, I spent many days on the couch wishing I was dead and then feeling guilty about having those thoughts. At the time I was working for the sheriff department in Malibu. I hated that job. Not just the job. I hated my life. Much of the time I hated that I was alive and I didn't understand what I was going through emotionally. 

The depression was crippling. I started missing a lot of work. Some days I would call in and sit on the couch with Uraeus. Now remember, this was '98. There was no Google. No social media where I could ask the world if anyone ever experienced the feelings I had. I reached out to a friend and used the best language I had to describe how sad I was. She told me that I should be happy. That I had a new baby and a new job and I didn't really have anything to be sad about. I wish I had another word. Sad is sad. Sad has never described my feelings. 

So it was me. I was...trippin'. I wanted to get better though. For Uraeus. He deserved better. But I didn't know where to go. Whoever heard of someone going to the hospital because of sadness? Not me. Not then. I remember my stepfather used to come home from work and find me on the couch and I felt like the absolute worst human ever. "You didn't go to work?" He asked. But it wasn't a question. There was no reason to wait around for an answer. I was a loser. Then days would come and I would be happy. Too happy. But the word happy is like sad. It's not an accurate description. I could see a future for myself and my son. I had all these grand ideas about art and poetry and life and...and...and...And then the dark clouds would return. 

I had a nervous breakdown at work. That's all I'll say about that. 

The next day or the day after I went back to my job. Before lunch I told my supervisor I wouldn't be back. "Back from lunch?" No. Just not back. No one was sad to see me go. I think I did my supervisor a favor. She didn't have to have the talk with me. As an employee I wasn't worth the paper a write up would have been written on. See, the lie depression tells you is that the world and your loved ones would be better without you. That you are a burden. And I believed it. 

But then Uraeus. There was something about him that I knew I had to be alive for. Even though I didn't know what I could bring to his life. I had to be here. I started setting small milestones for myself. I would stay alive until he started kindergarten. Until he finished elementary school. For sure until he got out of middle school. I thought when he graduated from high school I could leave. I told myself he would be okay. I knew it wasn't true. I knew it wasn't time. 

When Uraeus was eight he went to live with his father and stepmother. I had / have great respect and appreciation for her. Whatever problems his dad and I had I knew he loved Uraeus and could take care of him and wanted to and I knew his wife would be good to him. Once Uraeus said to me "Mom, if I have a girl one day then I'm gonna name her (my name and his stepmother's name combined)." I was alright with her. And really, you can't have enough people loving your child. Another time, Uraeus was describing a situation and said "My mom (stepmother)" then caught himself and said "I mean...I mean..." I told him "Uraeus, that's okay. If you're calling her mom then she's treating you like son." But even when I was the "non custodial parent" I was in his life. I always loved him. We loved each other. 

He moved back in with me when he graduated from high school. By then I had been diagnosed as Bipolar 1, was on meds and regularly seeing a therapist. I finally had to create a goal for myself that I could live into for me. My own reason to live. I've had...thoughts since then but when they come I have a better vocabulary around depression and the mania. I have resources. He's grown now and I can even talk to him. Because he should know. He listens and understands. I deeply, deeply love the man he has grown into. I love being his mother.