Benita Mayo

Blueprint

Benita Mayo

Memory is unreliable, and time has a way of bending the truth. I have always been on a journey to unearth and examine the stories that live within me—some through my own experience, but most through inheritance.

When Daddy suddenly passed in 2020, the tectonic plates of my life forever shifted. In an instant, I knew life would never be the same. As I find myself longing to understand the past, the impermanence of memory is palpable. I feel as if I’m racing toward an invisible finish line.

My parents were born in Virginia, a state with an indelible imprint on America’s most painful and pivotal chapters: the rise of slavery, the Civil War, and the long struggle for civil rights. Over 350,000 men, women, and children were sold from Richmond’s auction block. Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy, and the Fall of Richmond marked the end of the Civil War. Later, during a time of “massive resistance,” a neighboring county chose to close its public schools rather than integrate them. This was the Virginia into which my father was born.

History and politics shaped my family’s story. They directly influenced how we were raised.The most pervasive feelings I remember from childhood were fear and loneliness. We livedwith trauma, sorrow, silence, and deep wounding. But at the heart of it all, there was love—and a steadfast hope that tomorrow could be better than today.

Toni Morrison, in *The Bluest Eye*, urges us not to “forgive and forget,” but to “remember and do better.” Too often, shame and embarrassment silence truth. But only through declaration and revelation can truth and insight rise. Only then can the cracks begin to mend, and healing begin.

Much of what I have struggled with throughout my life has roots in collective trauma. In my search to understand what happened to me, I’ve spent 1,571 hours in therapy. It has taken decades to identify the cycles, to stop the bleeding, to clean the wound, and to begin the work of healing. For any wound to heal, this must come first. Then, in time, new tissue forms—a foundation for new skin that is stronger, more resilient.

Through words and pictures, I recount the fierce determination of a man caught in the web of history. The deck was stacked against him. But he made a way out of no way. The calmness of the landscape conceals the quiet outrage, the mourning, and the sacred commemoration.

Artist Bio

BIO

Benita Mayo

“Blueprint”

https://benitamayo.smugmug.com

benita18@msn.com

Benita Mayo is a visual artist based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is a resident artist at the McGuffey Art Center and an active member of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective. Mayo holds a B.A. in Rhetoric and Communications from the University of Virginia (UVA). Her work explores the collective female experience through the lens of a Black woman navigating the intersections of grief, memory, ancestry, genealogy, and trauma. Mayo was a fellow-in-residence at the UVA Equity Center, where she created a powerful photo essay examining the disproportionate pregnancy risks faced by Black women in the United States and the vital role of doula support in addressing those challenges. Rooted in storytelling and social commentary, Mayo’s art serves as both testimony and tribute—illuminating histories and identities often overlooked.