A lot of folks have asked me why this blog is a called Brick Sandwich. What in the hell does that mean, anyway?
I can’t take the credit here for coming up with the name. My daughter, Lorren, came up with it – when she was about 7 or 8 years old.
It’s a funny story: Ray, Lorren & I were driving home, playing the dozens. For those of you that don’t know, the dozens is a favorite pastime in some African American households. Most people are familiar with the popular “Yo mama” style of jokes. My parents used to play with me and my sister, Leslye. In my family, having a quick wit and being able to whip out well timed comebacks with ease are highly valued traits. To that end, I sometimes play with Lorren. I made a crack about something she was wearing and her retort was, “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re like a brick sandwich!” (At the time, she was going through a phase where she was using food analogies for most of her retorts). My husband and I broke out into hysterical laughter. A brick sandwich? What a combination!
It struck me... I thought about it a little more. Maybe it was subconscious on Lorren’s part, but the name suited me perfectly…soft and strong at the same time. I’ll give it to you straight, but it’s usually in the form of a funny story or joke. It had the same connotation as the iron fist in the velvet glove. I loved it!
When I think about the most basic ingredients of a literal Brick Sandwich, you’ve got two pieces of bread and a brick in the middle. Bread is sustenance. For some of us self proclaimed “carb addicts”, its comfort food. If it’s good, it’s usually soft and flexible. Traditionally, bricks are used to build things. If one is properly motivated, they can also be used as weapons, crushing anything in its path. Think of a brick wall. It’s strong, it stands its ground. It’s hard, but for a purpose. Very difficult to bulldoze, but it will hold you up if you need it to.
When I’m at my best, the Brick Sandwich in me gives nourishment to the people I love and affirms me and my relationships. If I’m operating at a slightly lower vibration, wear a helmet.
For clarity’s sake, the hardness I’m referring to is not in the heart or soul. I feel compassion for others. I have charitable moments. I don’t take pleasure in being nasty or cruel to people. I’m talking about having an incredibly low tolerance for bullshit – in whatever form it comes in. Whenever you feel like you’re being treated like a mushroom (fed shit and kept in the dark), your mind displays a red alert.
When my family & friends ask me for my opinion, they are not coming to get sugar coating. I have the unmitigated gall to tell you what I really think – even if I thought you, my loved one, were wrong. That’s the brick. On the flipside, I am there for the folks I love when life deals them an unfair hand. If you are going through a breakup, I will hug you and cry with you and pray with you that your ex’s intimate anatomy is somehow disfigured in a freak, but painful accident. That’s the bread.
Being a Brick Sandwich means being empowered to be your authentic self – and being fine with who you are, even if it doesn’t jibe with what everyone else is doing or what other people think you should be. At a very basic level, it’s cutting through the crap. It’s figuring out who you want to be when you “grow up” (even if you’re 30) and being just that – without apologies. It’s loving fiercely, working hard and playing when it’s time to play.
I know that I’m not the only woman that could be called a “Brick Sandwich”. I come from a long line of them – my grandmother and my mother immediately come to mind. The women I choose for friends are to some degree or another, Brick Sandwiches too. It’s there in all women. Nurturing is innate to most of us, but when pushed too far…well, watch out. The Brick in some is like a verbal Katana, popularly known as a Samurai Sword. You might not know you’ve been cut unless you start bleeding. Alternatively, the Brick can take the form of a Claymore Mine and everything in a 100 meter range is completely decimated, like if you are having an “Are You Serious?” moment.
The “bread” teaches our children to read, makes sure they eat their vegetables, takes care of an elderly relative, It’s the part of us that provides moral support and cheerleading when necessary. The “brick” will tell a loved one when they are full of it. I know this to be true - my mother told me I was full of it from the time I was 15 until I was about 23 - whenever she got the feeling that I wasn't being completely honest. She was never wrong.
Being a Brick Sandwich is not license to be a raving bitch. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not referring to women who like to go around and get in people’s faces and tell them about themselves or who are just plain rude. It’s about feeling the freedom to live in the truth of who you are. I’m talking about taking ownership of the state your life is currently in. If there are parts that are crap, you fix ‘em. For the parts that you love, then enjoy them to the fullest and make no apologies for it.
That is the reason I chose to call this blog “Brick Sandwich”. That’s what I am. I see so many women seemingly afraid to embrace their inner Brick, with their mates, their children, their families, with even themselves. If people really love you, they will love the real you. There’s no sense in trying to be someone else. It just makes the most important person in your life unhappy: YOU. We are with ourselves all of the time. Being anyone else, while seemingly convenient for the short term, can become complicated, exhausting and painful.
We tell ourselves that other people can’t handle the truth about who we are. In the dating world, it’s masked as “putting your best face forward”. For some of us, that means you’re really trying to figure out what the other person wants, so you can be that. For instance, you’re not a member of a church. You have no plans to become a member of a church and are fine with your relationship with God. You start dating a man that attends church regularly and expresses that he wants to marry a woman who goes to church. Instead of telling him up front that any potential relationship the two of you could have has very limited possibilities, you hurry up and join a church…or you tell him you’ve been looking for a church home for months and that maybe he could help you with that (wink wink). You join the choir, ladies' auxilliaries and model yourself after the church’s First Lady. Not cool. Six months from this point, you won’t even recognize the woman staring back at you in the mirror.
I’m not saying that if you are a Brick Sandwich that a relationship cannot change you. I have been forever changed by meeting Ray. He’s opened up my world tremendously. But, my relationship with him did not alter who I was fundamentally. I’m still Shayla. If he was interested in changing my basic makeup, then I would have known immediately that he wasn’t the guy for me. I’m fine with who I am. If he wasn’t, someone else would be. I didn’t try to make myself over into someone in the hopes that he would like who that was. If nothing else, I was sure I wouldn’t like who that was – because it wasn’t ME.
To be fair to the men folk, in my experience, most men don’t want to change a women, it’s usually the other way around (e.g. If I could get him to bathe regularly or stop going to the club, he’d be perfect!!!).
The moral of my story: Be everything that you are – the hard, the soft and everything in between. And please, for the love of everything that is holy and good, don’t be afraid of who that is…just trust yourself and know that if you’re true to your real self, your real feelings, everything else will fall into place.
