The Potty Mouth Granny

  • The Politics of My Hair

    We as Black women have a real complicated relationship with our hair. The texture and length of our hair have long been tied to ideas of beauty and social acceptance — especially when it’s judged as the “right” texture and the “right” length. Too often, those standards were never designed with us in mind, yet…

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  • Surviving My Brothers

    Grief keeps its own calendar. February comes in like a quiet thief, soft-footed and merciless, carrying dates that glow like coals. My brother Randy — gone on his birthday February 7th, just thirty-four, the candles never meant to be memorial lights. Four days earlier I was in a hospital bed with a broken leg, my…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Anti-Intellectualism

    I try not to judge people too much these days, because Lord knows I’m not a saint. But I’ll never understand why some folks don’t like to read. Reading saved my life. I started early — books, magazines, newspapers — anything I could get my hands on. If it had words on it, I was…

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  • The Day Death Missed Me

    Today is the 32nd anniversary of the day I got hit by not one, but two cars — and somehow stayed among the living. I don’t remember the impact. Just crossing the street. Not the sound. Not the moment my body met metal. My mind keeps that door locked. What I do remember is waking…

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  • The Sociology of Death

    I’ve been obsessed with death since I was a little girl. Not in a gothic-novel way. Not in a let me scare you way. In a quiet, watchful way—like a child sitting on the edge of the bed, listening for the sound of the world ending. My grandmother believed Jesus Christ was coming back in…

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  • Cheering the Boots That’s Still Kicking Our Asses

    The USA is home to Black people cheering on SS Brownshirts and censorship—and that sentence should rattle the teeth. We are watching a grim magic trick in real time: history in a cheap disguise, hoping nobody recognizes the smell. The Sturmabteilung once strutted through Germany claiming order, purity, and national pride, while quietly laying the…

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  • When Your Soul Is Weary

    I’m standing at the window, watching the snow come down—white, fluffy, quiet like it’s trying to behave. It looks like a postcard. Like peace. Like childhood laughter and cocoa commercials and lies. And I hate it. Snow is beautiful in the way a coffin is polished. Clean. Cold. Final. People talk about winter like it’s…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Power of the Ancestors

    Remember when I moved twice in 2023? Lord, my life was a real-estate soap opera that year. But that first apartment? That one earned a reputation. Anthony and India swore the place was haunted. Not “maybe a weird noise” haunted. Full-on somebody-died-in-here-and-never-left haunted. India even christened it The Bates Hotel, and once she said it,…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Emotional Illiteracy

    I used to think most people are stupid because they lack empathy. But are they really stupid or just clueless? That thought came from a hard-earned place. I’ve always been able to have empathy for others and when you’ve spent years watching loss, watching people disappear, watching grief carve hollows in real lives, you start…

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  • Black Trump Supporters

    The sociological aspect of Black Trump supporters is fascinating. Some genuinely believe that aligning themselves with white supremacy—the ideological backbone of this administration—will earn them acceptance, protection, or proximity to power. A seat at a table that was never built for them. What they don’t seem to grasp is that in systems built on racial…

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