💜✞💜 Chocolate Soul, Vanilla Care 💜✞💜

 💜 ───────── ✞ ───────── 💜

Chocolate Soul, Vanilla Care

🕯 A mother’s testimony 🕯

💜 ───────── ✞ ───────── 💜

✨

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

I didn’t set out to become a white mother raising a Black daughter in a white town. It wasn’t a concept. It wasn’t a statement. It was just my life — and then one day I realized how much responsibility was braided into it. 🫧

Not responsibility in the way people usually mean it.

Not rules. Not appearances.

Responsibility for a soul that would walk through the world differently than mine. 🪶

🌿 ───────── ✟ ───────── 🌿

Her dad, Stanley, was Black. He passed away in February. Losing him didn’t only break our hearts — it changed the way my daughter sees herself reflected back. There was a living mirror in him that I can never replace. I feel that absence in small, quiet ways — in questions she asks, in the way grief settles in her chest, in moments when she needs something I cannot give from the inside of my own body. 🕊

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His faithful servants.” — Psalm 116:15 🕯

I learned early that loving her meant listening beyond myself. 🪞

Her hair taught me first. Her skin followed. Her body did not respond to the world the same way mine did. Stanley’s family gently showed me how to care for her — what oils to use, what not to use, how to touch her hair with patience, how to speak about her beauty in ways that did not flatten it into comparison. They never made me feel like I was doing it wrong. They made me feel like love could be taught. 🌿

They treated me like a mother who loved their child.

And that changed me. 🫶

🪷 ───────── ✞ ───────── 🪷

As she grew, her needs grew quieter and deeper. They moved inward — from what lotion to use, to how she feels in rooms, to how the world looks at her, to how grief sits differently inside her. There are things about her life that I will never feel from inside my own skin. I had to stop pretending I could and learn how to stand beside her instead. 🪢

We live in a small, mostly white Texas town. Silence lives loud here. Difference shows up sideways. It’s in the looks that linger too long. It’s in the way some questions are never asked out loud but still felt. It’s in the way belonging has edges. 🪟

She feels it.

I feel it. 🫀

🌙 ───────── ✟ ───────── 🌙

And when her mental health needed more quiet and more steadiness, she asked to live somewhere gentler. Letting her go was not distance. It was protection. It was love choosing her nervous system over my fear of being misunderstood. 🩹

“He tends His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms.” — Isaiah 40:11 🌾

I keep Black voices in her ears — music, stories, women who sound like her future. I keep Black beauty in her reflection. I keep Black joy present in her world. Not as lessons. As belonging. 💫

Faith doesn’t sit above this for me. It walks inside it. God doesn’t erase difference to offer care. He doesn’t confuse sameness with safety. Loving her has taught me that stewardship is quieter than control. 📿

💜 ───────── ✞ ───────── 💜

My daughter carries a chocolate soul — history, memory, resilience, beauty, and belonging in her skin. 🍯

All I have to offer comes through vanilla hands — learning, imperfect, steady. 🤍

What holds her is deeper than color.

It is covenant.

It is calling.

It is sacred. 🕯

💜 ───────── ✞ ───────── 💜