The great St. Louis performance artist and playwright, Keith Antar Mason, says that life may have begun with the creation of atoms, but cultures are built with the telling of our stories.
Stories are at the center of the remarkable Durham activist and artist Omisade Burney-Scott’s innovative work on behalf of Black women going through the challenges of menopause. And those stories and lessons hearken back to the Black healing tradition, including her own.
“Ahhh yes, we were little girls,” Burney-Scott, now 53, tells the INDY, her luminescent eyes widening with memory. “My sister reached across the lamp, and it kissed her arm. And it burned her. My Aunt Anna said, ‘You going to put some salve on it, and I’m going to take you to Ms. So-and-So. And she’s going to talk the fire out of it.’ And we were like, ‘Whaaat is she talking about?”
Burney-Scott still remembers the woman well.
“She looked like she was anywhere between 75 and a hundred,” she says. “And we sit in her little house. She pulls out the Bible. She tells my sister to sit down. And then, I forget what it’s called when people open the Bible and pick a—basically, she divined. She was like, ‘Boom. This is the scripture.’ And she read the scripture. And then she took her hand, and she put her hand over my sister’s arm. And she prayed. And then, after she prayed, she anointed my sister with some olive oil … and we went on about our business.”
Her sister’s arm, which should’ve scarred, bears a mark but feels smooth, she says.
“That’s a story we will always tell,” she says about her family. “And the power in that woman’s hands. The power in her hand. And all the Africanisms in that. Wrapped up in Jesus.”
Burney-Scott’s popular podcast, The Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause, is in its second season and relies on stories and healing traditions like these.
“If you unpack each of the stories, there’s a remedy that’s been gifted to folks,” Burney-Scott says of the podcast. “Whether it’s the remedy of forgiveness, whether it’s the remedy of self-acceptance, whether it’s the remedy of living your passion, whether it’s the remedy of loving who you want to love—there’s a remedy packed into each one of these stories.”
Burney-Scott’s work deals with the wide-ranging impacts of menopause and aging, especially for Black women. The largest, ongoing body of research surrounding what women experience during menopause comes from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, which started in 1996. The study found that Black and Latina women enter menopause earlier and experience more severe symptoms, owing to socioeconomic factors and other stressors, including systemic racism.
The Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause first aired last year on Mother’s Day, then launched a series of community conversations in Durham, Washington, D.C., and Kenya. Coronavirus interrupted plans for a community session that had been scheduled to take place in Harlem in late March.
Undaunted, Burney-Scott began hosting conversations online; events for the summer solstice and autumnal equinox drew over 300 people each. One Facebook event attracted more than 1,500 viewers.
During a September podcast episode, “Healing Is Your Birthright,” Burney-Scott conversed with guest Karen Rose, a master teacher, herbalist, healer, and priestess who lives in Brooklyn. Much of the discussion focused on the benefits of plant-based medicines, and how they can give women a measure of medical autonomy to heal themselves. Many of these remedies had been passed down through families rather than formalized medical practice.
Rose, who owns the Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn, recommended herbal concoctions for common menopausal conditions: hot flashes, lack of libido, vaginal dryness, skin changes, and stress. A native of Guyana, Rose noted that her remedies are based on “ancestral herbal practices” that were gifted to her by her parents and grandparents.
Last month, Burney-Scott expanded on the podcast’s success by publishing a beautifully designed e-zine, Messages From The Menopausal Multiverse which rewrites the narrative surrounding the stage in a woman’s life when she experiences a natural decline in her reproductive hormones when she reaches her forties or fifties. The e-zine includes the words of local womanist activists. It also pays tribute to Burney-Scott’s mother, along with other Black women whose work has served as a guide along her journey: Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sojourner Truth, June Jordan, and Toni Morrison.
The dynamic volume offers “keys” to not just surviving, but thriving, while aging gracefully. In it, Burney-Scott presents her selfhood as the possessor of four elements, or “Omis”: earth, air, fire, and water.
The Fire Omi asks, “What does it mean to be in this body at this time, to acknowledge what this body wants and needs, and to move accordingly?” The Water Omi asks Black women to “reclaim your sweetness.”
“Reclaim rest as an act of liberation,” the Water Omi says. “Fight the addiction to stay in motion.”
Lana Garland, director of the Hayti Heritage Film Festival, says the festival will be giving The Black Girl’s Guide a platform to have a conversation with a major television network next year.
Garland did not go into the specifics, except to say the network will “meet up with Black Girls in 2021.”
Speaking to the importance of Burney-Scott’s work, Garland, 58, points out that as a Gen X-er, her coming-of-age years were marked by an older generation of women who did not talk freely about menopause.
“There was a reluctance,” Garland says. “Like it was something that was shameful.”
Garland says that when she was in her forties and going through perimenopause, she felt like she had missed out on conversations preparing her for the first indicators of hormonal aging.
“It was like, ‘Oh my God, why aren’t people talking about this?’” she says. “And it affects us all. Our children. The men and women in our relationships.”
Garland says The Black Girl’s Guide represents a paradigm shift of “who we decide ourselves to be.”
“This conversation is very, very, very important,” she adds. “We get to say who we are.”
Nia Wilson, the executive director of SpiritHouse in downtown Durham, echoes Garland’s observations.
Wilson says culturally, Black people and people of color are used to honoring their elders for their wisdom, and to learn what they have to offer. But white supremacy and patriarchy teach women to “stay young, move quickly, and be productive.”
“Think about how many times women run to get plastic surgery so they can remain young,” Wilson says. “I’m finding beauty in my body at 57, and it’s hard to say that out loud. It’s like a cognitive dissonance.”
“Women are relegated to boxes as we get older,” she adds. “We still feel vibrant. We still continue to learn, grow, and thrive. We have to combat the boxes. Women are shamed for, and shamed about, the aging process.”
That’s why she’s grateful for the work Burney-Scott—affectionately known as “Omi”—is putting forward with her podcast and zine.
“Omi broke that wide open, and created a voice to say who we really are,” says Wilson, who adds that Burney-Scott’s work is engaging Black women of all ages. “We’re not just strong Black women. We can be soft. We can be vulnerable. We are still being sexual, and there has not been room to talk about that until now.”
Burney-Scott says she wants to “decolonize the crone.”
“If you say, ‘Describe an older woman to me, or an older witch, or an older whatever—what would you say they look like?’” she asks. “And people would say, ‘Hmm. She’s probably wrinkled, and gnarled up, and white, and lives in the woods, and is mean, and is isolated, and terrorizes children.’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah.’”
That raises questions for Burney Scott. “Why is that who she is? Where did that come from? Where did that trope or stereotype come from?”
Burney-Scott says she is not yet a “crone”—defined by dictionaries as a thin, ugly, old woman—but feels that she’s on her own personal journey to “crone-dom.”
“Because I’m aging,” she says softly. “Because I’m aging.”
Part of Burney-Scott’s journey is offering a contrast to a youth-centric culture that celebrates all of the different ways that young people move, create, love, fight, learn, and grieve. She aims to show that older people have those same aspirations and desires.
“Just because you’re 50, or 60, or 70, or 80, doesn’t mean you don’t love,” she explains. “That doesn’t mean you don’t experience sexual pleasure. It doesn’t mean you can’t express yourself sexually. It doesn’t mean you don’t experience passion, or sensuality. Or grief, or anger. You still experience all those things. You just have more lived experience.”
Follow Durham Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald on Twitter or send an email to [email protected].
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