Search the Community

Hi, I’m here again lol. Thanks for all of you who have helped me through my crisis a couple weeks ago. QUESTION: How do I deal with my family who discriminates against me because i am darker. Now, I am vulnerable with this topic. I don’t know how racially diverse worthy is, (doesn’t matter) but I don’t know if any of you would understand what I am saying or relate. I am grateful for any advice. Like some of you know, my family is not supportive of my mental health. I can not tell them my issues. So I come here. I am very grateful for all of you, truly! Anyway, I’m a black young women (17). For all of you who don’t know what colorism is. It is “prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group”. Colorism is a huge problem in the black community. In my experience, among some people I know and in society, dark skin is looked down upon. The thing is, colorism is a topic that makes people uncomfortable. I think because no one wants to admit that it exist. And because they may be colorist aswell. So here’s my problem, my immediate family is very colorist. This started with my mother who is of darker skin. Now, both my parents are black but my father is lighter skin. His complexion is more like George Lopez, while my moms is like Naomi Campbell. I have 5 sibling. My older brother and myself take after our moms complexion and my younger sister and younger 2 brothers take after my dads. Well you would think that my mother would not have a problem with having darker kids but she does. She projects her self hatred onto me. She has been verbally (& physically) abusive to me since I was 8. Whenever she wants to insult me, she targets my skintone, which is the same as hers, and also my hair and weight. She has uplifted my siblings as better and more beautiful than me because of their lighter skin. She makes comments indirectly about their hair and skin as being better than mine. It hurts. It hurts because she has brainwashed this to them, making them believe that they are better than darker people like myself. It hurts because i am singled out and this has been going since I was a young child . My mom is a narcissist so she really won’t accept blame. We have a looooonnngg history of just craziness. We have been doing better, but we never got along. I was always to blame. But that’s besides the point really. I have never struggled with accepting my skin; (blessing), but my low self esteem was because of my weight and I just think I am ugly. I recently realized that what is going on in my family is NOT okay! I have talked to my parents about this and how satan wants to divide our people. And colorism is a trick he uses. While they accept what I’m saying, they continue to make these comments. I am gaslighted all the time about being over sensitive when I get upset. For example, the reason I am writing this is because 10 minutes ago we were having family time and I told my dad that his comment about my brothers girlfriend was disrespectful and colorist. Of course he denied it. But then my sister jumped in and began to scold me. BTW, she is VERY vain and thinks that she is better because she is lighter. She doesn’t understand the struggles dark skin women face. My sister thinks she is prettier than me because of her skin. And for the comments people make about her being prettier than me because she is lighter. I’m sorry that this is so long. It is just that I’m very sad rn and feel less than. As much as I try to stay strong, their comments get to me and sometimes I question myself. I have always took pride in my skin but other areas I struggle (body). I hate when people are sad. Especially when other little darker girls hate their skin because of colorism and society. For example, my younger cousin who is 4 believes she would be prettier if she had light skin. It happens in the black community a lot. The media influence has a lot to do with it aswell as the whole slavery stuff. But I want to be an activist and a lawyer one day. And tackle problems like this. I know colorism is also a problem in India and south Asian counties. Anyway, if you made it this far God bless you lol ?! Any advice is needed. Please pray that I can strive forward, I just feel drained and forgotten . I’m trying to do better and listen to god... but I admit I am struggling. Thank you, love all of you !?

Hi there! I am going to start off by giving a bit of a backstory, and please hear me out by reading all of this because I am in dire need right now. I grew up in a lovely home with Baptist parents who attended church every Sunday. However, I hit very traumatic times at about 7 years old, and now I am 16, going on 17, and my life is healing from the trauma of divorced parents, dealing with calling defax on my own mother for emotional, verbal, and sometimes physical abuse, hating my father for years due to my mother calling him unworthy every chance she got- only to find that my father did everything he could to make me realize he meant no harm, and all the mental issues which came with these life experiences. Shortly after turning 12, four years into my nearly 10-year real-life conflict, I found myself falling far from God. Although I had become fully saved according to the Baptist faith and believed with all my heart that God was my savior and my all at age 10, I fell far from Him only two years later. Two years later, at 12, and hardly 12 at that, I text my friend late one summer night. "I don't know that I believe in God anymore," I sent her, crying my eyes out because all I needed right then was someone to pull me back to God and say that I needed to hold on. I desperately needed someone to grab my ears and pull me up saying, "Hello!! Jesus is alive! He is alive! And He loves you more than you'll ever comprehend!" But, the reality was far from this. My friend responds less than a minute later. "I am an Atheist." My heart dropped at the message. But... strangely enough, it later was found with relief. I felt ACCEPTANCE for falling from Him! It sounds crazy because it is. I researched for a long time, mainly in the wrong places, and I found myself to identify as an Atheist. This lasted for years, all the way until a month or so ago to be frank. I am going to be 17 in July and going into the 12th grade next year, and I believe this all happened in the summer of going into 6th or 7th grade, which would have put me at 11 or 12. So for 5, possibly 6, years I have been very lost and falling blind of God. I fell into believing I was transgender, from female to male, to believing I was gay and dating a girl almost a full year. Many, many tragic things followed this initial start of trauma when my parents got a divorce at 7 years old. Now, having all that said... I still feel a strong incomplete pit in my life, this being my relationship with God. I still question my sexuality today. I believe that being abused for all those years led me to believe I was homosexual because beforehand, I never EVER questioned my sexuality. I was your typical "boy-crazy" little girl who would go to their mom after school and say, "Guess what mommy! [Enter name here] talked to me today! I was so nervous!" I can tell you confidently now that I know I am a beautiful, straight female who deserves just as much as everyone else. In my heart, I feel that. However, I hesitate to answer so confidently in person because it takes denying my past conflictions to find my true self deep within me that, yes, I am that person. For a long time I denied this person that I was because of the many times my mother would tell me that I wasn't her daughter, I wasn't what she wanted, and I was a mistake through and through. I believe truly, within my heart, that abuse can cause lifetime problems such as this. Abuse, especially that in childhood, does not just affect your personality, your social life, and your way of coping with life situations. Abuse affects your lifestyle, your beliefs, and all the critical things of yourself. I am stuck. My ex-best friend and I started talking recently. We grew up together and shortly after I went from a true Christian to Atheist, we fell apart from one another. In the past month, we found each other via social media and I have come to find, not to my surprise, that she is still very faithful and connected to God. Even when we were little and very close, I was inspired by her connection with God and trust in Him, despite our different beliefs. She was raised Apostolic Pentecostal. I was raised Baptist. However, now that we have reconnected, I have caught her up with everything that happened to me in the past years that we haven't talked. She amazes me still at her immaculate trust in God. She is now involved in leading many youth groups to teach the Bible to younger kids, as well as attending her own youth group herself. This makes me intrigued in her beliefs since I am currently not under any official belief besides that in which God does indeed exist. My mother is not much in the picture anymore, so I have free reign to explore all sorts of Christianity that I please without fear of being bashed or shunned for doing anything other than Baptism. I have been looking into Apostolic Pentecostal all day, trying to actually understand what the belief is all about compared to Baptism, since that is what I know best, and it makes so much more sense to me compared to what I grew up with. Is there anybody who is an Apostolic Pentecostal that could please help guide me and help me in understanding the beliefs? I am very intrigued by this way of praise and church-going. So please, if you read all of this, which I hope you did because it contributes so much to my reasoning behind this, and you are an Apostolic Pentecostal, please give me information on your beliefs and ways of praising and keeping faith. I am finding God again, and I do not plan on losing Him this time. Not again.

My entire life I've been that one kid who never gets in trouble in class and is always faithful (at least that's how others saw me) Recently though I've developed an addiction to porn and masturbation. It started last summer with watching nudist videos and now it's spiraled into an addiction. I keep trying to stop (and failing) although recently I have sought out God more and it has gotten easier. I have a feeling that I am finally going to quit this once and for all. I just needed to confess this to someone anonymously and hopefully get this behind me. If anyone has tips for this please respond.