The Color of Love

When a person adds light to anything in his or her life, the darkness dissipates. Metaphorically, when you add love and compassion to a situation, also, hate and fear dissipate. The solution is simple, but how do we shed light into the places and souls that need it most?

The Color of Love

 My Story about The Color of Love

My first moments discovering the variety of love around me and utter inability for the world  to be color-blind, happened when I was in the sixth grade. In my entire tiny town of West Mayfield, Pennsylvania, as I was growing up, there was only one family of color. This meant that the young children of that family went to my grade school. Fortunately, for my sister Lori and I, we shared a classroom with two children of this beautiful family. The friend in my sister’s grade had died with complications from AIDs around 1999. I have no idea where the young, proud black woman landed, who helped me see through prejudice as a child.

Early in the school year on September 22, I was to have a small birthday gathering with some kids from my class. I was allowed to invite any of my friends or neighbors. The young brown woman in my class, Yvonne, was my friend. Of course, I would include Yvonne on my guest list. However, some of the parents found out about Yvonne’s invitation, before the birthday (including my dad) and stopped their children from attending. My dad explained to me how this particular invitation could change the color of my birthday. However, I was satisfied if Yvonne and I ended up being the only ones at my party. I wasn’t going to let hate force me to un-invite anyone from my party because of color. 

When I was in the 8th grade, riots around the Martin Luther King era began to arise in the Beaver Falls area of my town. I remember clearly, my brother Mark was a part of those riots. He had been fighting for the white folk, though. He came home with a bruised and bloody body. This infused anger and fear even more in my small town. Who were these black folks that felt as if they DESERVE the rights of us—White Folk—who have been living here for hundreds of years? 

I heard the cries and saw the fears from both sides of the aisle. I didn’t judge. Even as young as I was, I prayed for wisdom to understand, because no adult in my life at that time understood prejudice. When asked why they hated black people, they were unable to share any kind of truth that satisfied my unwavering palette for authentic truth and love. 

I have spent my entire life fighting for something that was so innate, I can’t even explain how I ended up being so colorblind from such a young age. 

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