What Would You Do If Your Children Plotted to Kill You?
That question alone makes people uncomfortable.
Good. It should.
Before you clutch your pearls no, I’m not talking about knives, poison, or some Lifetime movie plot. I’m talking about something quieter. Something far more common. Something far more devastating.
I could lie and say the thought never crossed my mind.
But I’m a realist.
And realists don’t get the luxury of denial.
I keep my mind open because I know my past. I know the terrain I’ve walked. I know how love, loyalty, and manipulation can braid themselves together until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
So I ask myself not out of paranoia, but out of honesty:
Who would it be?
Would it be Diandre a child never planned, yet fully accepted?
Son of Morgan Proctor, grandson of Barbara Proctor. I was 17 years old, he was 27 years old.
An assignment I embraced without hesitation. Because he reminded me of my days with New Edition, hanging out in Chicago #BrookePayne
Loved unconditionally.
Allowed to strengthen me, even when it cost me pieces of myself.
Morgan Proctor wife Robin, is Lisa McCoy lesbian lover RIP BARBARA PROCTOR.
Or would it be Deja a secret revealed later, wrapped in faith, values, and belief systems that were never neutral?
I KNOW WHY/HOW I LOST WHITNEY... THAT'S WHY NEW EDITION LOST ME!!!
A child whose existence reshaped how I saw Black men, partnership, and spiritual alignment.
Unequally yoked not just in belief, but in truth.
Would it be Torrence Jr. the child of my former husband, placed into my life under circumstances I didn’t consent to, didn’t choose, and wasn’t informed enough to protect myself from?
A source of constant stress masquerading as obligation.
And then there are the covers.
The narratives.
The masks.
Names like Andre Gentry and Cedric Harris weren’t accidents. They were sent strategically then later “bought,” traded, and recycled the same way pieces of my family were.
Not to know me.
But to discredit me.
To control the story before I ever spoke.
So when I ask, “Which living child would betray me first?”
I’m not asking out of fear.
I’m asking out of awareness.
Because betrayal doesn’t always look like violence.
Sometimes it looks like silence.
Sometimes it looks like loyalty to a lie.
Sometimes it looks like participating knowingly or not in systems designed to break the woman who raised you.
Motherhood doesn’t make you invincible.
Love doesn’t make you immune.
And blood doesn’t guarantee protection.
The real question isn’t whether a child could betray a parent.
The real question is:
What would you do if you saw it coming?
RIP REINERS
