©2013 by Karsonya Wise Whitehead

April 3, 2013

     For the past couple of days, I have been thinking about how hard it is to be a grown up. You have so much to worry about and so much to do. It is almost as if you are running a race and just when you think you are near the finish line, someone moves it. My life is now an endless stream of moving finish lines. I feel old today; not because of my age but because I am tired of not being able to see the end. (I keep wanting to put down my load and run ahead, slightly beyond where the end is going to be.) I have been thinking  a lot about death today; maybe it is because my grey hair is starting to come back or maybe it is because cancer has finally come back to my circle of my life. I never used to think about cancer and about what it does to the body or how it affects your spirit.

Excerpt from “Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America” (Apprentice House, 2015) https://www.apprenticehouse.com/?product=letters-to-my-black-boys-raising-sons-in-a-post-racial-america