It’s been one week since I packed up multiple garbage bags filled with belongings for my two children and me. My heart was enraged in pain from my husband’s words. Tears streamed down my face. As I readjusted the purple microfiber towel that was on my head. My husband of almost eight years professed with his chest and back turned that he was seeing another woman. 

 “Go in the house and wash yo’ ass, chile.” 

That’s what some of the black parents and grandparents used to yell at me and the other children that were still outside running around in our yards during the heart of the summer in southeast Louisiana. 

I thugged out exclusively breastfeeding my now three-and-a-half-year-old son for two years. Eli did not take to a bottle nor pacifier the way he did my breasts. I mentioned and referred to thugging out my exclusive breastfeeding journey because I endured the backlash from others for how I fed my baby.