When the Storms Wouldn’t Let Up, I Still Chose to Stand

When the Storms Wouldn’t Let Up, I Still Chose to Stand

By Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

1978 was a year of noise and change, of treaties and tragedies, of records spinning and lives shifting. Camp David made history. A blizzard smacked Boston like it owed it money. Jim Jones took lost souls down a dark road. People danced to the Commodores and blasted aliens on Space Invaders. Argentina won the World Cup, and the New Orleans Saints kept doing what they did best losing. And somewhere in the midst of all that, across the ocean, a test-tube baby made headlines in Britain.

But none of those events announced the arrival of a quiet child born into the arms of a woman named Marva. There were no cameras. No front-page articles. Just a baby boy brought into the world with ancient eyes and a stillness about him that puzzled even his own mama.

That baby was me.

Mama said I rarely smiled. Said I looked like I had seen things before I got here. Said I sat still so long you'd think I was part of the furniture. I wasn’t sad I was studying. The world, the people, the stories in silence. I was watching, storing, absorbing everything like rainwater into dry ground.

And while other boys chased basketballs or got into trouble, I was writing. By the sixth grade, I had penned over fifty poems. Words were my friends when people weren’t. But junior high came like a cold wind, and depression set in. I didn’t even know what to call it. I just knew I felt broken before I had even started living. I wore low self-esteem like it was stitched into my skin. That year, my GPA hit a rock bottom so low the numbers felt like a joke zero point zero. My name wasn’t on any honor rolls; it was on people's worry lists.

They sent me to every kind of specialist under the sun. Psychologists said I had a void. Counselors said I was angry. Learning experts labeled me with something that sounded like a permanent excuse. But all I needed was time. I wasn’t delayed I was being developed. Like film in a darkroom, I just needed the right light to show what was in me.

As I grew, I turned to martial arts and religion, studied the holy texts of every monotheistic faith I could find, like I was digging for God’s fingerprints. I poured myself into understanding the world its pain, its beauty, its divine contradictions. The more I learned, the more I healed. My soul started finding its shape.

And yet, for all the books I read, for all the wisdom I chased, there was one lesson life wouldn’t stop teaching me: love is hard to find, and even harder to keep.

I loved hard. With my whole being. And every time I thought I’d found something real a partner, a teammate, a soulmate it was like sand through my fingers. When life turned cold, when the fires came, when my world tilted sideways, each woman I loved slowly stepped back. The very moments when I needed to be held, to be told, “I’m here,” were the same moments I found myself alone.

It’s a cruel thing to want love so deeply and be met with silence.

Outside of my mother Marva and my grandmother Celestine, I’ve never truly felt unconditional love. They were the only ones who knew how to wrap a person in safety. They prayed for me, fed me wisdom when I was starving for direction, believed in my potential even when I couldn’t see it myself.

But romantic love? That one stayed hidden from me like a sacred door I could knock on but never enter. Every time I gave my heart, it felt like the universe watched in silence as it got mishandled, misread, or left behind.

I wanted someone to love me like my grandmother did. Someone who wouldn’t just be there for the victories but would hold space for me during the bruises. Someone who didn’t see me as just a poet or thinker, but as a man who cries, who breaks, who needs to be carried sometimes too. But love… she always seemed to vanish just when I needed her the most.

Still, I kept going.

In 1997, I went to Georgia for a new start. But family called me back, and I answered. My grandfather was dying, and my grandmother needed me. So I returned, not out of obligation, but out of love the kind you show up for. I enrolled in college, pursued psychology. Maybe because I wanted to understand why people leave. Why they fail each other. Why love can’t be enough.

I started writing again. A girl named Sally Ann came to me in a vision, sitting beneath a tree. Her story grew roots in my mind. I began crafting a book pages full of her voice, her struggle, her spirit. But life wasn’t done testing me. My newborn son, Jabriel, passed away at just nine days old. Hurricane Katrina hit, flooding lives and dreams. And then my grandmother’s health declined. My anchor. My everything.

In my grief, I rushed to finish Sally Ann just so my grandmother could hold it. I wanted to see the sun break on her face one more time. But I was too late. Time took her hand before I could place the book in it.

One night, broken and aching, I walked around a lake in Georgia. A weeping willow stood there, looking like sorrow made of bark. And I heard a voice. Not a memory a message.

"By the pond you shall see me

Standing there like a weeping willow tree

Dreary and weary, eyes all teary

My soul cries out but does anyone hear me?"

It was her. My grandmother, speaking through the wind. I ran home and wrote those words down. I faxed them to her in Houston, and somehow God knows howshe read them. Her voice trembled with joy.

“Kateb,” she said, “this is a blessing. It brought a smile to my weary body. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long time.”

That was the last time I heard her voice.

March 25, 2006. She transitioned. Five months after I buried my son.

You’d think I’d quit. Give up. Disappear.

But I remembered Job. I remembered Noah. I remembered that sometimes, faith is all that stands between you and madness. So I kept going.

The doors didn’t open easily. Publishing was a battlefield. Rejection letters piled up like unpaid bills. But I pressed on, bruised and believing. I founded the National Black Artists and Writers Association not for money or fame but because our voices deserve a platform. Our children deserve to see themselves in stories, poems, plays, and paintings. Our stories deserve stage lights and ISBNs.

Through NBWA, I’ve watched art become healing. I’ve seen poetry mend wounds. I’ve seen storytelling become survival. And I’ve learned that even if no one ever loves me like my grandmother did… I can still love others in that way.

I love the lonely with my words. I stand with the heartbroken with my poems. I hold the weary with my stories. I pour into others what I was never given.

That is legacy.

That is love given freely, even when it hasn’t returned home.

So here I am.

Still walking. Still writing. Still believing that maybe one day, love will find me and stay. But even if it doesn’t… I have become love.

Because when the storms wouldn’t let up, I still chose to stand.