Melanin and Sisterhood

My sisters and I had been saying for years how we wanted to put together a photo shoot, and this past week, we did that! What did we learned through this? It takes commitment, decisiveness, pressure, compromise, blind trust, and a whole lot of love! The process throughout felt like we were planets revolving around the sun (our bond), with a strong yet inconsistent amount of gravity accessible, while we were tasked with constantly pulling ourselves together to make sure we didn’t fly in different directions.

We all have different personalities, and despite being sisters, even our upbringing varied to the weirdest extent. So you can imagine the clashes and the love! We are sisters by blood, connected paternally through our father, with different mothers in the mix. We’ve lived together, we’ve lived apart. Our father had twelve children, and we in this photograph represent just three out of the six mothers that created this tribe.

For the longest time, our sister Barbara had wanted to have a professional photograph of all of us sisters in her home. We did it some years ago, with white shirts, blue jeans, and we were young, still growing into ourselves, discovering who we are. This time around however, we planned, we decided on outfit color, material, location, cost, photographer, makeup artist, time, etc. With Barbara leading the charge, we had to put a lot of trust in her to get us the right photographer. We had to compromise and bite our tongue when making decisions about the nude tones. We had to put pressure sometimes on each other when someone wanted out and we needed to explain to them why it was important to stick to the goal. At least on four different occasions someone lost sight of the vision and wanted to pull out of the shoot. And each time we had to bring it back to the middle.

Someone wanted to postpone till summer for better weather, another time it was to wait to be financially ready, another time it was oh I can’t find the right outfit, the hell no’s, another time it was I’m not feeling the sister vybes so we should just hang out instead of the shoot etc. I mean I could go on.

But that day, after being basically three hours late to our shoot, with one of us there five hours early, all over the place, we had the most phenomenal photographer tell us to jump right in! As we always come together so gracefully when we are together, despite how much we doubt our connection sometimes, the shoot went smoothly. @Hughmorrisphotography wasted no time getting us comfortable in front of the camera, he wouldn’t even let me get my lashes on at first, and just kept saying, “Just for practice” with a very Grenadian accent! Still, we didn’t feel rushed, he acknowledge our emotions, he surveyed our sister connections, he spoke to most of us one on one beforehand, he directed every move when we got stuck, down to the motion of the fingers around the cheeks or the hand across the stomach, and curve of our feet. We loved the experience. We played beautiful music, Naija, Culture Reggae, Dancehall, Soft Rock, Hip Hop, Neo-soul, and we danced.

Being such a complex and beautiful variety of personalities, we cried on the set, we felt closer than ever, we laughed, we joked, we ate, we smiled, we danced, and we were happy that we went through with it.

Being sisters, with such deep melanin in our DNA makes us energy havens. We gather as one, and we burst into sunlight and honey, and gold. We protect one another always despite a shortage of insight at one time or another, we put each other in check, we show love, we give positive vibes when it’s needed, we listen to one another’s struggles and successes, we encourage, and best of all, we have watched and will continue to watch each other grow into beautiful flowers over the years. That image represents so much for us, that the world could never fathom just how deep it goes. It is our bond, our unity despite trials, arguments, silences, and endless heart to submit to our reality, our hearts are full. We love each other dearly, and we won’t stand to have it any other way.

We already want to do it all over again. 😁🌹😍

“Black women are made out of brown sugar, cocoa, honey, and gold. And the strength of ten thousand moons.” – Somebody DopeModels from Left to Right: Valentina, Safiyyah, Malika, Amanda, BarbaraPhotographer: Daniel Simon @hughmorrisphotography

#africa #naturalhair #blackwomen #sisterlove #sisterhood #melanin #locs #family #haiti #queens #sisterskeeper