The Wounded Warrior

The archetype that has plagued Black men

The Wounded Warrior is the archetype that has plagued Black men.

We’ve forgotten that within our bloodlines are warriors who picked up a spear and shield and went to war for the village even when the European colonizers showed up with guns.

You have some men who are too tough to the point of no sensitivity and you have some men that are so soft that if they saw a Black women(maybe even there own mom) being attacked they wouldn’t do anything

See The Battle of Isandlwana (wikipedia link) for some real bravery.

I was once the wounded warrior.

At 15, I found myself almost being initiated into the Latin Kings.

During high school I put a very strong armor over myself to never get bullied again as I did in middle school.

I have alopecia areata which is an autoimmune disorder where the white blood cells attack my hair follicles, essentially I had bald spots.

I was able to cover it well most of my middle school career with my long curly hair when one day “Frankie” noticed one of them.

He pulled me over and basically all the popular Dominican kids that I wanted be like laughed in front of me in the hallway in front of my entire grade.

The trauma of that day still impacts me today.

Underneath there is this voice that always says I need to do more to be apart of the “cool kids”, when I’m really the cool kid.

When we moved from New Jersey to Connecticut where I would start high school in a brand new town, I made a promise to myself.

I would never be bullied ever again.

Oh I made sure of that haha.

I found myself in a lot of physical fights and was the one at school you did not fuck with.

My friend Estuardo at the time knew a Latin King group out of New Rochelle which was 15 minutes from where we lived.

We were preparing ourselves for the initiation process when I stopped.

With all the 1-on-1 physical fights I had been in (probably around 4 or 5 by 15), my pride could never let a group of people jump me for 5 minutes without not hitting back so I said no.

This pride had come from my own sense of family my parents did their best to cultivate. An anchor that has kept me from veering off over and over again.

I think about our African youth in NYC a lot.

What was unique about the gangs back in my day was there were Elders in the gang that showed the youth how to be a man in society (White media has partially corrupted the image of gangs). As I’ve learned about the history of Latin Kings, it clicked for me.

I was chasing a sense of family. Being seen and heard as I explored hip hop culture.

My dad growing up hated that I wore t-shirts down to my knees and wore durags. Since he grew up in NYC when there was a gang on each block, he worked really hard for me not to have that lifestyle. The irony is I fell into it anyways.

What’s challenging about the gangs of today is that you have 15 years old shooting each other up because in their gangs there are no Elders.

No one to show them how to be a man in this world.

No one to show them how to be a warrior in the world.

A wounded warrior preys on the vulnerable.

An embodied warrior protects the vulnerable.

The way we get back to this embodiment as Black men today is through crying out for our little boy who missed a childhood with emotionally present primary caretakers.

We learn to set stronger boundaries as an adult as we learn to protect the innocence of our own inner child.

What awakens in the stronger NO is the awareness of how important it is to protect the innocence of our children today.

WARTIME, which I released on Feb 7 2023, was my own exploration of helping me embody the warrior as I went head on with some men in my life who I looked up to.

They supported me in me learning how to roar and when I found my roar and roared back, they acted like little kittens. More to come on that if you’re interested!

If you want to embody the healthy warrior more within yourself here are some good journal prompts:

• What is my relationship to conflict?

• When I’m in conflict with someone, what are my usual patterns? Do I freeze and get quiet? Do I run away? Do I fight immediately?

• Where are people crossing my boundaries right now and where can I take a small step in saying NO? For some that might be looking in the mirror and practice saying it!

Free write for 3 pages with these questions in your consciousness. Don’t even worry about spelling and grammar, just get it out of your head. This is the beginning of starting to allow things poke out that have been waiting to be looked at for a very very long time.

If you want to learn some personal support to find your roar you can reach out to me for a free 30 minute phone call. https://www.heru.cx/contact