*Photo by Ryan Graybill on Unsplash*

Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid, so real, that you woke up out of a dead sleep just welling with emotion?

This is something that happens to me often… and while I generally only share anything from my dreams that feels important with family and friends, this dream felt so big and the imagery so strong that I wanted to write it out for others. I don’t know if it holds a particular meaning, but it feels increasingly important in the month that has passed since.

“I walked among a street teeming full of people. Many of the people were wearing fancy hats, fancy Victorian era clothing, and they all seemed on their way to someplace important.

The street seemed too congested. It was hard to move through, so I started trying to make my way to the edge of the sidewalk. As I got close to the edge where I had more freedom to move, I bumped into a white woman whose hat fell off as we collided. As she picked up her hat and dusted it off, I apologized.

The woman stood up, smiled at me as she put her hat back on her head. She looked me up and down, and then handed me a card. She told me that she had been looking for a lactation consultant, and she asked if I would be willing to consider a paid position. In the dream I knew I had just obtained my doula certifications, and I was very excited for this opportunity! I agreed and she told me her address was on the card, before she disappeared into the crowd.

I looked at the card, and began walking along the sidewalk instead of the street. The card was white with fancy gold letters. When I looked back up, I was standing in front of a huge and fancy white and gold victorian looking building with a giant iron gate in front. Some men in very colorful and fancy attire (like that of the British queens guard, but many colors) opened up the gate for me and then closed the gate behind me.

As I walked through the entrance of this house, I entered a very large ballroom style room. It had shiny white sparkly flooring and a very large crystal chandelier hanging from a high ceiling. I saw the woman to my right standing by a flight of stairs that disappeared into the ceiling. She smiled, clapped, and said “oh yes! I am so glad you are here! Please, right this way.” She led me to some white wooden double doors. As she flung them open, I first noticed the beige carpet on the floor of the room. I looked ahead, and saw that the room was very long with a massive fireplace at the end. The walls where white from the ceiling down to waist high, where a dark brown wood paneling began.

As I entered the room behind the woman, so excited to start my new job, a feeling of confusion came over me. The room was lined on either side with an arc of dark brown antique wooden chairs. In each chair was a black woman in modern day clothes, looking exhausted, drooping, hair disheveled. Each woman was looking down at a white baby in their arms. All of the black women were breastfeeding these white babies.

I looked up at the woman and realized she expected me to be a lactation consultant to help all of these black woman to feed these white babies. It didn’t feel right, and I wondered what I got myself into.

As I broke gaze with the white woman smiling at me, I glanced to my right where a black woman simultaneously broke gaze with the infant she was holding and looked at me. It felt like her tired eyes were staring deep into my soul.”

I had this dream the last week of August, 2020.

I briefly told my aunt and husband about it that morning, mentioned it was weird, and went about my day. I felt kind of off after that dream- I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with what’s happening here in the United States among so much racial injustice and community unrest. The disturbing imagery within the dream of what appeared to be forced wet nursing really stuck with me… and still is an image I wish to get out of my head. This image was particularly disturbing to me mostly because I also know the violent history of black women (including enslaved and free black women) being forced to nurse white babies- the babies of their masters, abusers, and oppressors– all while being forced to neglect, give up, or kill their own. For more context, you can read this PDF “Mothers’ Milk: Slavery, Wet-Nursing, and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South” By EMILY WEST with R. J. KNIGHT

Later in the week, I found out that it was “Black Breastfeeding Week”, a week during national breastfeeding month that is dedicated to increasing awareness about the experiences of black women and their families. Some may not understand why this is an important topic, much less week of emphasis; So while the topic could probably span many articles alone here on the blog, I’ll give you just a snippet:

Breastfeeding, while 100% natural and extremely positive both for babies nourishment / health and mama/baby bonding… it is not as simple or easy as one might think for every mother & baby. Breastfeeding requires a lot of time and work. Using your body to feed another human externally after the symbiotic nature of those initial 9 months can be a steep learning curve for the first time- and it can be such a different experience from child to child. Different mothers are able to produce different amounts of milk- which is something that also varies from each birth. Some produce milk much faster than baby can drink it, others struggle with keeping up a steady supply. This means eating a lot of the things that will help increase your supply of milk if you aren’t producing enough- even if you are not always feeling hungry. Sometimes there are latching problems, sometimes baby is frustrated and too fussy or just won’t take a breast just like they sometimes won’t take a bottle. Those first few weeks after birth can be hard to adjust too, especially with ones very first child- even without breastfeeding. Add in that some states still considered public breastfeeding to be too taboo or sexual that it wasn’t fully legal across the states until July 2018, and you discourage many people from even trying to do something that is perfectly natural and super healthy for their baby.

Because of racism within our healthcare systems and the history of breastfeeding among the black mothers; Black mothers are more likely to be encouraged by hospitals to formula feed. Some are never given a choice or offered a lactation consultant. In fact, at least 1 study has shown that black women are 9x more likely than white mothers to be offered formula upon birth. read more HERE

Was this dream simply a manifestation of one of several reasons I want to pursue becoming a doula and educator primarily for communities of BIPOC? While this is something I am reading about and hopefully pursuing next year, my intuition feels that its much larger than that.

I cannot shake the feeling that this dream has something to do with our current environment around politics and the christian church in the US. It seems pointed to the racial tensions that have skyrocketed this year among the treatment of BIPOC Americans and immigrants, including: state sanctioned killings of Indigenous and Black Americans, the attacks on Asian Americans, and the dismemberment and surgeries forced upon Latinx Americans.

I can’t help but think that this dream might also have something more to do with our current leader- who champions this idea of becoming great by twisting the clocks hands backwards. With every twist, attempting to rewrite history- by utilizing executive orders to write things like “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping” and proclamations like “Proclamation on Columbus Day, 2020″ into detrimental policies and laws. It appears that their is a push both emphatically for and vehemently against our country to revert to the ‘good old days’ when minorities had very definite places in society, and black women wet nursed white babies. In the context of the dream, I’m not sure if America is the babies, or the woman looking to hire me… But it feels as though the overall meaning will swiftly become clear the closer we get to election day.

What are your thoughts on this dream? Have you previously heard about the racialized violence promoted through wet nursing? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please leave a comment down below.