This morning, my husband and I were talking about the story he’s writing and before I go any further, let me just say: this is one of the best stories he’s written since we’ve met, and it’s an honor to get to dig into his work with him before it’s released into the world. We were talking about one of the themes I think runs through the whole text, and he looked at me and said: don’t make monsters out of small things. Without spoiling anything, one of his characters realizes he’s much bigger than the program. Matter of fact, he is the program. Once he sees that, he decides he can overcome the situation. Not with ease, but with a little hard work and what looks like a little faith.

I got so excited when he said that, because it named exactly what I’ve been doing. There are so many small situations lately that have caused me to feel anxious and unsteady, things that can honestly be fixed with a little more discipline, patience, and maybe some vitamin D3. Getting up a little earlier instead of taking a nap because my son has me exhausted. Pushing through a bit more of the day to get that extra proposal written, or to look for another grant funding source.

I’m not saying this to say I need to work harder. I am a hard-working individual, and I always make sure I’m doing what I can to move forward, professionally and personally. But I’ve been turning these feelings into monster, so much so that sometimes they take over my entire demeanor and change my disposition day to day. I haven’t named them anything creepy or slimy, nothing that would make your skin crawl. But, even though God said no weapon formed against me would prosper, I’ve still built this whole world in my mind where I’m the main character, and my only job is to go through the wind and the fire and take down any monster that comes before me.

As dramatic as that sounds written out, that’s genuinely what it feels like in my head. That breeze my man gave me this morning in the bathroom pulled me back down to earth. He wasn’t even trying to give me advice, we were just chopping it up. But it’s stuck with me since.

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Now to you. If you haven’t noticed, I like beginning with some of my own experiences to show that you’re not alone. This is not a one-off. One of the mindset shifts I have to make daily is remembering that systemically, this is designed this way. It’s working exactly the way they wanted it to. There’s research behind this, because like I’ve said before, feelings are real but not reliable. I’ve mentioned her before, but Dr. Cheryl Woods-Giscombé’s Superwoman Schema research found a pattern in Black women. There’s an obligation to always look strong, suppress emotion, succeed without enough resources, and take care of everyone else. It’s linked to higher stress, more depressive symptoms, poor sleep. Sound familiar? It did to me.

Here’s the other side: the monster’s size isn’t fixed. Research on Black women’s stress responses points to something called secondary appraisal. This is how we decide to cope, and whether we believe we can handle it, paired with mastery, our sense of control over our own thoughts and next move. Those two things shrink the monster back down to what it actually is. A small thing. Not a wildfire. Just another manic Monday.

So maybe that’s the real lesson buried in my husband’s story. His character doesn’t defeat the program by becoming bigger than it through brute force. Life takes him through there, but he defeats it by realizing he already was bigger than it. The power was never the fight. It was the recognition. I think that’s what this season is asking of me too. Not neccessarily to work harder, not to build a bigger sword for a bigger battle, just to stop handing small things the size of monsters. God already said no weapon formed against me would prosper. Maybe part of believing that is refusing to arm the weapons myself.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do this week: the next time something small starts to feel like a wildfire, a contract, an email, a bad morning, pause and ask yourself if it’s actually a monster, or if you built it one. Most of the time, it’s just another day Treat it like one.

For example, I was living my problem of practice and thankfully I’m not there anymore. Right now I’m actually in a favorable situation: being seen and heard on my job, given full autonomy, mentored along the way. But there was a stretch where I was living it, and that’s the part I’ve been unpacking.

I’m almost finished with the first year of my doctoral degree, and I’m genuinely excited about the progress I’ve made while doing this online, while being a wife, a mom, a business owner, and a full-time employee. But, here’s the thing I’ve really been struggling with: slowing down. Actually taking a moment to sit in what I’m experiencing. To feel all the feelings. To make sense of what’s happening to my body mentally, physically, and spiritually.

What I’m finding is that the more I rush any part of the process, whether it’s the initial stage, the innovative stage where I’m trying to develop ideas and make things make sense, or just the everyday decisions that impact my closest relationships, things shatter. When I rush, I’m not processing. I’m not understanding things well, and for a while, I wasn’t even sure where the rushing was coming from.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint it. Looking at it from different angles— was there a point in my childhood where I was conditioned to make quick decisions, even when I already knew the answer? Or is it simpler than that. Is there just this deep desire to be finished, to move on to the next thing? I’m finding that the second one is true for me, and I’m also finding that it’s one of the hardest things to grow out of in this season.

I’m learning to take things slower. A lot of that conflict, the rushing, comes from not having real processes in place. Not at work, not in church, not even at home. One thing I’m learning is that I have to process in a way that makes sense for me, or I’ll end up paying for it later.

There’s this urge and I think it’s a Black woman urge, if I’m honest, to always be reaching for something to complete, something new to add to our list of multi-hyphenate titles. Turns out I’m not imagining this. Psychologist Cheryl Woods-Giscombé actually named it back in 2010: the Superwoman Schema. It’s built on five things a lot of us were basically raised on: the obligation to be strong, the obligation to suppress our emotions, resisting vulnerability, pushing through with less than we need, and helping everybody but ourselves.

The data on what that costs us is not subtle. Women who lean hardest into suppressing emotion and refusing help are showing up with higher stress levels in the research. The Superwoman score itself has been tied to worse sleep and more insomnia. One woman in that research put words to exactly what this feels like, she described it as an obligation that isn’t just to yourself, but to your family and your community, to hold everything together and keep it strong. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s not just in our heads. This is generational. It’s cultural, and it’s measurable in our bodies.

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God was extremely adamant about not making us all alike. We might share the same goals, a morning that feels easy, a nervous system that’s actually calm and consistent, but what you see online, from your favorite influencer or even a mentor, isn’t necessarily the path you’re supposed to take. You may not be able to take the same steps, the same precautions, to get where they got. Maybe that’s why we rush. Maybe the dopamine hit we’re chasing comes from quickly accomplishing things, quickly saying we have the answers instead of actually sitting with the process.

My professor reminded me that I’m on chapter one of my dissertation when I should really still be on the introduction. She kept telling me that because I’ve done so much analytical work, and because I’ve truly lived my problem of practice, it’s become incredibly hard for me to step back from it. But, that’s the lesson, isn’t it? Slowing down enough to see how it’s impacted me, and making room for other people’s stories and narratives to matter too.

Here’s the part that actually gives me hope, though. The research doesn’t stop at what rushing costs us. It also shows what happens when we do the opposite.

A study of 223 Black women found that self-care actually functions as an intervention, breaking the negative link between stress and health. Self-awareness and resilience predict whether a woman practices self-care in the first place, and self-care itself was shown to soften the toll stress takes on how we rate our own health. In other words, slowing down enough to build self-awareness isn’t just a side effect of healing, it’s the mechanism we can use to get there. The study asked Black women to define self-care in our own words, and the conclusion was direct: self-care can help combat the impact of structural racism and sexism on our health, and it can actually help close the gap in health disparities. A mindfulness intervention built for Black women caregivers managing chronic stress and hypertension had a 93% enrollment rate, with 86% and 93% retention at three and nine months. Women didn’t just sign up, they stayed and applied these practices.

So what’s my message to you? You have to slow down at some point. You won’t do anything well if you keep moving at that pace. Think about it: if things don’t make sense to you, your product won’t make sense to anyone else either.

Your need for control, your inability to sit still in a steady, stable place is costing you relationships. It’s costing you the ability to move forward, and sometimes, it’s costing you the growth you already know you need.

So start small. Take inventory of what stays and what goes this week. What processes do you need to put in place to actually force yourself to slow down? Add less to your to-do list. Pick one room to tackle instead of all of them.

Slow and steady still wins.

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I’m learning a really big lesson on community, as it seems we all are. People are joining run clubs and Pilates classes at a crazy rate, and it’s not just because they want to look better or run faster. People are longing for community. I’m not the first to say this, but I do know firsthand how hard maintaining community is over a long period of time. As a multihyphenate Black woman, I move between different parts of my life with ease. My upbringing made me a people person before I even knew that’s what was happening. That ease showed me a wide range of personalities, tics, and communal practices, some of which never actually aligned with who I was. It used to feel simple: don’t acknowledge the gap between your values and theirs, and you’ll still get along fine.

I hate to admit it, but I was wrong.

I crave community like the next person, but the biggest lesson I’m learning is that you have to align with a community in morals, values, and loyalty. The moment those things shift, something in the relationship shifts with them. The problem is I wait too long to admit it. Maybe it’s conflict avoidance, but at some point I’m not convincing adults who can read, comprehend, and critically THINK where they got me messed up. I didn’t have a lot of space to practice conflict resolution growing up, so my patience is thin for things that don’t align.

If I’m honest, I usually left late because I waited too long to see the mistreatment as a problem in the first place. I made excuses for behavior, for tone, for the small compromises because I wanted people. I wanted acceptance. I’m learning that wanting acceptance that badly meant I’d tolerate almost anything to keep it. By the time I finally saw it clearly, I was grieving the version of myself that thought this was what belonging cost.

Those few months of darkness weren’t random, at least not when I look back at them. I’m still reflecting on the choices I made and some of them were INSANE, but they were what I thought was neccessary at the moment. Although they weren’t random, its what happens when you finally stop making excuses for people, and the silence that follows isn’t peaceful right away. It’s just quiet enough to hear yourself for the first time. I do believe some of that isolation was intentional, even if it didn’t feel like a choice at the time.

These days, I choose differently. I have to. Before I let anyone into my life long-term, I’m watching for the same three things I used to only check for after it was already too late: morals, values, loyalty. Not perfection, becayse nobody’s checking for perfection, but alignment. Can they hold a boundary without punishing me for having one. Do their values bend only when it’s convenient. Do they stay when staying costs them something. The run club taught me this without me even realizing it was teaching me anything. I didn’t need people who ran my pace. I needed people who made room for mine. That’s the whole test now.

I used to think the lesson was about who to let go of. It’s not, not entirely. The lesson is that belonging was never proof I was aligned with anyone. It just meant I was accepted, and those aren’t the same thing. My patience for misalignment wasn’t a virtue, it was self-abandonment wearing a cute fit. So now I choose slower, and I choose on purpose.

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If you take nothing else from this, take a few of these lessons. I keep a list of things life is teaching me, and in the last 30 days, these have been featured lessons on my list:

• Belonging isn’t proof you’re aligned.

• Patience for misalignment isn’t a virtue, it’s self-abandonment.

• Wanting acceptance badly enough will make you excuse almost anything.

• Leaving late means grieving twice.

• Isolation can be correction, not failure.

So next time you feel the pull to join something, a run club, a group chat, a church, a room full of new people, ask yourself what you’re actually choosing. Then take your time and choose slower.

(Note: This picture is NOT a result of joining a rub club. My sister convinced me to do a 5k. I said yes. We ran SLOW, but isnt this medal so cute?!)

My base was my white church friends. I loved them hard and assumed it was mutual. But eventually things clicked and I realized that kind of love came with conditions I never agreed to. You’re not like the others, as if being the acceptable one was something to aspire to. There’s a particular grief that comes with realizing the people you gave your whole heart to saw you as an exception, not a person. When I left, I got labeled an Oreo, and I know why. Because I lived in the 1-5, had Gucci and Jeezy on rotation, knew what survival looked like but I didn’t sound like what people expected. Neither world claimed me fully, so both worlds named me something diminishing instead. Nobody asked what it cost me to exist in white spaces and then come home and try to belong somewhere else. They just needed me to pick a lane.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: code-switching is not a quirk, but a survival strategy that Black women specifically have been forced to master so that white spaces stay comfortable enough to let us in. We learn to soften our voices, smooth our edges, smile wider and we do it so flawlessly and effortlessly that people forget it’s a performance. Then they have the audacity to be surprised when we’re exhausted and acting funny! Performing is energy taxing.

It has a REAL cost. The psychological labor of managing your presentation to avoid discrimination, hurt, or even acceptance erodes your sense of self over time. You forget which version of you is actually real and still, the system asks you to keep going. I’ve lived this in professional spaces too. My doctoral research centers on Black women in nonprofit leadership, specifically how institutions erase the sophisticated work we do and call it “support.” We carry the mission. They give someone else the title AND the money. We mentor, build, hold entire organizations together and get written up as helpers. When we name it, we’re difficult. When we leave, they scramble to replace everything they never acknowledged we were doing. That is a pattern and it has everything to do with whether we’ve been allowed to see ourselves as leaders at all.

For my 30th birthday, I went to Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. My biological father is Dominican, and visiting the DR was always something I needed to do. This was the one part of my story I hadn’t yet touched. Walking through that city, seeing women with my face, my skin, my features, something settled in me that I didn’t know was unsettled. My husband said they looked just like me. I cried, but not from sadness. From recognition.

For most of my life I had been looking at myself through other people’s eyes, especially through the eyes of people who needed me to be blacker, or less Black, or something they could categorize. In Puerto Plata, I looked at women who shared my face and thought: oh. This is what I actually look like. That’s what belonging feels like. Just being seen. Black women are shape shifting every single day. Bending into rooms that were never built for us, paying for belonging with pieces of ourselves. The workplaces that need you smaller, the churches that need you quieter, the friendships that need you easier. They are asking you to settle a debt that will never be paid off. You will keep giving and they will keep asking. Your full self is not a liability. The West Baltimore girl, The Dominican mami, the church girl, the doctoral candidate, the woman who wept in Puerto Plata: they are all me. They were never in conflict. I was just taught to keep them separate for other people’s ease.

You don’t have to pick a version of yourself that makes other people comfortable.

I did it for years. I’m not in that season anymore.

If you don’t know where to start, start with God. The God who made you fully. Who didn’t make a mistake when He gave you your mouth, your fire, your volume, your complexity. Sit with that. Then, get quiet enough to hear yourself. She has been waiting. She knows things. She has opinions you’ve been swallowing in meetings, in friendships, in relationships where you were always the one doing the adjusting. Let her speak. First to yourself, in a journal, in prayer, wherever it’s safe. Practice telling the truth before you take it public.

Find your Puerto Plata whatever that is for you. The place, the person, the community, the moment where you see your own face reflected back without conditions. You need at least one place in your life where you don’t have to translate yourself. Where you are not an exception or an anomaly or a diversity hire or the first. Where you are just a woman who belongs. If you don’t have that yet, finding it is the work.

Last, as my girl Octavia Butler would say, write yourself in. All of you. Every zip code, every lineage, every contradiction, every version that didn’t fit someone else’s category.

Write her in before someone else writes a smaller story about who you are

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I had to put the book down twice because it was too accurate.

What I realized is that I had been living in a constant state of output. I was always producing, always available, always adding value to spaces that weren’t always adding it back. Somewhere in all of that, I stopped being able to hear myself think. I couldnt even hear God for real. My nervous system was disregulated in ways I didn’t even have the words to express. I just knew I was tired in a way sleep and PTO wasn’t fixing.

So, life forced me into it, but I did the work. I slowed down. I built systems in my personal life and my professional life. I got intentional about what I said yes to, and I stopped filling up my calendar with tasks that I don’t even have the energy to complete WELL. I started protecting my energy the way I’d always protected my image, my identity. Slowly, something shifted. My nervous system reset. I started feeling like myself again, not the performed version of myself, the actual one.

That’s when creativity came back.

I want to be clear about that sequence, because I think we get it backwards sometimes. We think creativity is something we chase or something we can schedule. We think its something we produce through discipline and output. But what I’ve learned, both from my own life is that creativity isn’t blocked by laziness. It’s blocked by noise. It’s blocked by a nervous system that never gets to rest. It’s blocked by environments that demand performance instead of making room for authentic expression.

Teresa Amabile, one of the foundational theorists in creativity research, said it plainly: external pressure to perform kills intrinsic motivation. When you are constantly managing what other people need from you, your internal creative engine doesn’t have fuel. You’re running on obligation and obligation is not a creative state. As someone who tries to be creative and innovative in all that I do, being able to be creative is what keeps my confidence up. Keeps the imposter syndrome away.

The moment I got the non-essential things out of the way, creativity rushed right back to mama!

I’m in school right now studying the foundations of creativity, and this semester I’ve been working on two projects simultaneously. One is my memoir, Restoration, which has been in process for a while. The other is something new, a Black speculative fiction short story called The Shed.

The Shed started because my husband challenged me to take the themes from the memoir and carry them into fiction knowing dag on well I only write academic papers and poetry. He gave me one challenge. One door I didn’t know I needed to walk through, and what came through that door surprised me.

The story is about four generations of Black women in the Bouchell family, each one carrying gifts they were never allowed to use. The protagonist is Yara, a 22-year-old woman who has been performing joy so long she genuinely cannot find where the performance ends and she begins. Sound familiar? At the center of the story is a creature called the Hushmouth. He’s what you get when enough women are made silent across enough generations. He feeds on performed joy and cannot touch honest expression. I built that creature out of something I’ve lived and an identity I’ve struggled with. A creativity hostile environment doesn’t just slow you down. Given enough time and enough silence, it becomes something that has weight.

The question underneath The Shed is the same question I’ve been sitting with in my own life: what happens to a woman when she is never allowed to just be?

Not perform. Not produce. Not manage. Not carry. Just be.

The course gave me words for what I already knew in my body. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity taught me that creativity requires three things: the individual, the domain they’re working in, and the field that decides whether what they make gets to survive. In Yara’s bloodline, the field is the women themselves. Each generation holding space for the next until someone can finally do the work. Noka Jean, Yara’s great grandmother, never gets to finish what she started. But she plants the field. She holds the line, and because she did, Yara has somewhere to stand.

I think about the women who held the line for me. The ones who did not get to finish. The ones who swallowed things whole so I could have room. I think about what it means that I’m only now, at this point in my life, after slowing down, after resetting, after finally choosing what is essential, able to write this story. The timing is not an accident. You cannot access what’s real in you when you are constantly performing for survival. The gifts don’t disappear, they just go quiet.

I want to speak directly to you for a second. If you are a Black woman reading this and you are tired in that specific way, the way where you can’t remember the last time you did something just because you wanted to, the way where your calendar is full but your soul feels empty, the way where you are everybody’s answer but a priority, including your own, I need you to hear me.

You’re not broken. You’re not behind. You’re not too far gone.

You’re just incubating.

The reset isn’t you giving up. It isn’t weakness. It isn’t something you have to earn or explain or justify to anyone. It’s the most sophisticated thing you can do for yourself and for everyone you love because you can’t pour from an unregulated nervous system. You cannot create from a place of constant performance. You can’t give people the real you when the real you hasn’t had silence long enough to surface.

Start with one essential thing. Just one. What is the thing that, if you protected it, would make everything else feel more possible? Start there. Build the system around that. Let everything else fall away. The women who came before you swallowed things whole so you could have room. Don’t fill that room with more noise. Fill it with what you actually came here to do.

The gifts are still there. They have always been there. They are waiting for you to get quiet enough to hear them.

Go get still. The rest will follow.

One of the main reasons I stepped away from documenting this journey is that I was let go from an organization I loved deeply. I was blindsided. I poured so much of myself into that work and at my own expense, it became one of the biggest and most clarifying lessons of my career. It didn’t just impact my professional life. It touched everything.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know I’m pursuing my EdD in education management. My community work lives at the intersection of everything I love and everything I am, so when I was unexpectedly let go from an organization with the potential to reach parts of this city that had never been touched, the problem of practice I’d laid my heart down for became even more real to me.

I was angry for weeks. It’s really not that I feared I would lack anything personally, financially, or physically. It was something else entirely I think. There was a very familiar feeling underneath all of it. One I hadn’t encountered in over a decade. The feeling was so buried that I didn’t recognize it at first, and really, for 2.5 years. But my body knew. It knew what it felt like to have someone take from you what was never theirs to take. To be made to believe that what was happening was what you wanted. That their vision was your vision. That their dream was somehow yours. I had been here before, just not in a workplace, but in rooms where I was younger and had even less language for what was being done to me. When I finally made the connection, I understood why I didn’t just feel fired. I felt violated.

My problem of practice came to life in a matter of days. I had to make quick decisions, wipe my tears, and figure out my next move. I drew deeply from the Black womanist thinkers I know and love to make sense of what had happened and to understand how I could use this experience to sharpen my PoP rather than let it break me.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: Black women educators are doing the most sophisticated leadership work in PK-12 and nonprofit education spaces. Transformative, systemic, visionary work. But, the institutions they serve were never designed to recognize or reward that work as legitimate leadership.

The problem is not the women. The problem is who built the board, created the rules, changes them when they feel like it, and who gets to decide what a valid move looks like.

The beautiful thing about chess is that no matter how the board looks in the middle of the game, the player who controls the center controls the outcome. You can be down material and still win because strategy outlasts chaos every time. And God? God does not play about His children, and as you can see, He does NOT play about me.

I am actually quite thankful for the personal and professional development I had been putting myself through. All the networking, the late nights, the calls at any hour, ended up being worth it. I lost a lot of other things in the process (we’ll get to that), but for this moment, for this particular battle, I was prepared. Seeds had been planted, and in no time and I really do mean in NO time, I was employed again.

But I was still broken.

I wrestled with my identity in ways I wasn’t expecting. Who am I outside of being the super Black woman everyone knows me to be? Who am I when the workplace isn’t reflecting my worth back to me? Those questions hit different when you know you’re good at what you do. I’m not humble about my work, I really am THAT girl, but God has a way of growing you and breaking you down at the same exact time, and that’s exactly what this season was.

While I was in it, none of it made sense, but one thing that did was this: if my problem of practice was going to mean anything, I had to actually do the work myself. Not just study it. Live it. The firing cracked something open. It brought on a fresh wave of imposter syndrome, but this time I was at ground zero, which made it easier to trace the root, and when I got honest with myself, the problem wasn’t external. It was internal. It was a lack of boundaries. It was the need for approval from a version of success I had constructed in my hear, one that, as it turns out, was never mine to begin with.

What did that wrong version of success look like? It looked like attempting to grab contracts every other week. Constantly chasing the next dollar, the next deal, the next person who could write a check. It looked like adopting a language that was never mine, talking like a hustler in the workplace because somewhere along the way I was told that’s what it took to be taken seriously. Negotiating like I had something to prove, performing a hardness that didn’t belong to me, because someone decided that was the only way a woman in this space could move.

It looked like swallowing my politics. Softening my edges. Making myself palatable enough for funders and donors to feel comfortable, comfortable enough to open their wallets. Shrinking the fullness of who I am so that the people holding the resources wouldn’t be unsettled by her.

All of it was foolish. And honestly? Still is. None of that was me. It was a perfomance, a costume I had been slowly putting on, piece by piece, so gradually that I didn’t even notice I was wearing it. And the firing? As painful as it was, it ripped that mask off, and for the first time in a long time, I had to stand there and ask myself: okay. So who are you, actually?

Here is what that mask cost me.

I lost myself. I mean I genuinely did not recognize who I was anymore. I lost parts of my relationship with God, which for me is not a small thing. That connection is my foundation, and I had let the noise drown out the very voice that had always been my guide.

I almost lost my family. I lost things I loved. Hobbies, interests, parts of my inner life that had nothing to do with work or achievement or impact, things that were just mine, just for me. I lost my sense of self so completely that when I tried to look inward, there was an echo. I even lost weight and not in a way worth celebrating.

What I was left with was a woman who had given everything to a version of success that was never built for her, by institutions that were never designed to sustain her. I had to sit with that. Really sit with it. But here is the thing about losing everything that was never really yours to begin with, it creates room. And God, even when I had put distance between us, had never stopped preparing that room for something real.

I’m not going to hold you — I know this is going to sound crazy. But I am genuinely, deeply, whole heartedly thankful for what happened to me. Now. Ask me that a few weeks ago and the answer would have been absolutely not.

But today? Today I get to work from home. I get to move slow and intentional with my husband and my son. I have reclaimed my time in a way that I didn’t even know I was starving for. I picked up all my old hobbies again. I started reading, actually reading, for pleasure, for myself. I got back in the gym and handled all that baby weight. (And I look so good. I’m just saying.) I gained community. Real community. Those that see you and chooses you without an agenda attached. I let go of people I had outgrown and honestly just don’t care for and I did it without guilt, without ceremony, without looking back. Maybe the most unexpected thing of all? I fell back in love. With love. With life. With the woman I actually am when nobody is extracting from her.

This is what the other side of a hard season looks like. Free. Present. Mine.

Let me tell you who is walking into what’s next.

A Program Manager. A Director of Education. A doctoral candidate working on her EdD and not even 30 years old yet. A wife. A mother. A homegirl. A scholar. A community builder, and unapologetically, unquestionably, THAT girl.

I have been through the fire in every sense of the word. I have lost, grieved, wrestled, and rebuilt. I have done the internal work that most people avoid because it is not comfortable and it is not cute. I came out of it with more clarity, more purpose, more love, and more God than I walked in with.

So yes. I am thankful.

With everything I have been through, everything I have learned, and everything God has deposited in me for this next season, if I were anyone or anything standing in my way?

I’d be scared of me too. 😉

Anyway.

Black History Month had me on a high. I felt drawn to my grandmother, to my ancestors, to a kind of power that felt almost unexplainable. I should have mentioned that my BHM read was Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell, and it left me full of hope and with a desire to lean into my community even more than before.

Now we’re entering yet another monumental month for us. Women’s History Month brings about those same feelings. I’ve even seen the internet referring to it as Black Women’s History Month, which… even better. This month, I’m making a promise to myself. And if this finds you, I hope you make the same promise to yourself.

You owe it to yourself to be unapologetically you.

You owe it to yourself to continue doing the work, spending the long afternoons researching, refining your craft, and making sense of parts of history that haven’t made sense for a while. You are so much bigger than what you see right now. But there is still work to do.

I don’t want you to think of that work as tedious or mundane. I don’t want you to read this and feel pressure to change your personality, your mission, or the way you see the world. It’s time to settle into who you already know yourself to be.

Your life experiences brought you here. I know you’ve been wrestling with whether any of it makes sense again.

Your trauma doesn’t have to sit on your skin like a new dress. But you also don’t have to hide it. It’s about time you walk in it. There is power in standing firm in who you are.

Look at the greats in literature.

Octavia Butler wrote worlds where Black women were centered in futures that never expected them. She did not shrink her imagination to make it digestible. She wrote expansive, prophetic, complicated stories and trusted that the work would find who it was meant for.

bell hooks wrote about love, patriarchy, race, and feminism with clarity that made people uncomfortable. She did not soften her critique to be palatable. She chose truth over approval.

Roxane Gay built a body of work that holds contradiction without apology. She writes about vulnerability, fatness, trauma, desire, politics, all of it, without asking permission to take up space.

They did not make names for themselves by shrinking. They did not hold their God given gifts hostage. They did not gatekeep themselves in hopes that someone, anyone, would validate their voice. They showed up fully and so many of us heard them.

We can even talk fantasy and television.

Last blog, I mentioned Olivia Pope, a Black woman commanding power in the Whitest House there is. Flawed. Strategic. Brilliant. Assertive. She did not ask for permission to take up space in rooms designed without her in mind.

Issa Rae built an entire universe around awkward, honest, imperfect Black womanhood. She started on YouTube with The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and expanded into a cultural force without abandoning her specificity.

Tracee Ellis Ross has built a career on being loudly herself! Joyful, eccentric, fashionable, brilliant. Whether on Girlfriends or Black-ish, she embodied women who were ambitious, complicated, and fully human.

As you can see, the only thing they have in common , outside of being Black women, is that they were just… them.

They didn’t mind failing out loud. They didn’t mind being seen trying, and failing, and trying again. They did not organize their lives around the status quo. They were not preoccupied with what society said they should do. They committed to themselves first and maybe that’s the promise this Women’s History month requires of you.

But, here’s the part we don’t talk about enough. You don’t have to make a grand announcement. You don’t have to rebrand. You don’t have to post a manifesto. You don’t have to perform your evolution so people can witness it in real time. You don’t have to make a statement about how you carry yourself. It actually does not matter as much as the internet would like you to believe.

What matters is that you do well.

What matters is that you are a good person.

What matters is that you are a woman of strong integrity and character when no one is clapping.

This Sunday, I want you to sit with that. I’m not talking about the pressure to become someone new or the urgency to pivot loudly. I’m definitely not referring to the anxiety of being misunderstood…

Just the quiet confidence of knowing who you are.

Growth does not require a press release. Alignment does not require an audience. It just shows up differently.

So if this month shifts something in you, let it. If it confirms something you’ve already known, honor it. If it requires you to walk a little taller, then do that. But do it quietly, do it consistently, and do it with character.

Tonight, as you prepare for another week, ask yourself:

Where can I choose integrity over performance?

Where can I choose alignment over approval?

Where can I choose myself without explanation?

That’s the work and it doesn’t need an announcement.

Circa ‘99

A mother and her daughter

A lot of times we make decisions based on what we can see. We make choices blindly that sometimes place us in compromising situations (not intentionally) but because we are trying to do what’s best for everyone involved. For generations, Black women have been asked to carry society on our backs while keeping the community around us satisfied, hoping that somewhere in the process it would make us feel worthy too.

For generations, Black women have been the fixers. The maternal. Everyone’s saving grace. History shows this clearly. Black women who were enslaved carried the responsibility of caring for, feeding, and nurturing systems that were formed in compromising and horrendous behavior without choice. Later, as the United States government invoked laws that destabilized the Black family structure, Black women became the sole providers at home. The mama and the daddy. The judge, jury, and at times the executioner.

So of course it’s easy for the world to flip blame onto us. To remove us from the workforce at rapid rates. To target us when we choose ourselves. Because we care deeply and want to see our communities thrive, we often go with the flow. I’d like to believe that’s always been our posture. But now, we have slightly more “freedom,” more choices, and more opportunity to decide what we want life to look like.

And that shift? It’s going to bother some folk.

I’m not even talking about other women. I’m noticing that Black women have become much more communal and supportive. Through what we call transgenerational trauma, we’ve started to recognize that other Black women aren’t the problem.

Currently, I’m reading communion by bell hooks, and it dives into women’s relationships with their bodies and how, in choosing a partner, you must choose one who does not try to control, or manipulate in order to control, because we belong to ourselves (and God, if that’s your thing). Which also means our choices are going to upset those who think they have ownership over them.

And yes. I’m talking about the men.

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What I’m about to say is in no way how I feel about my husband. My man knows I don’t like his kind, just him really. He’s so special and so rare. I pray this world is always kind to him… but the rest of yall. I don’t know.

Men can’t stand when they can’t control you.

Think about Fitz and Olivia in Scandal. Fitz loved Olivia. He needed Olivia. He relied on her sagacious advice to quite literally protect the presidency and preserve the United States government. He knew she was often right. He trusted her intellect. He depended on her strategy. But the moment she stopped orbiting his power, when she wasn’t “acting right,” when she wasn’t centering his campaign, when her focus shifted toward her own career, he would subtly reassert presidential dominance. Not because she was wrong, but because she was autonomous. There was always a power struggle. He wanted partnership, but on terms that kept him elevated, and the tension intensified when Olivia chose herself. When she stepped fully into being “the fixer” on her own terms. When she stopped being an accessory to his ambition and started being the architect of her own.

And yet, it never stopped her from choosing herself.

They called her “the fixer,” but she later realized she was being used to fix everyone else while suppressing her own desires. When the focus became her firm and not his campaign, it caused issues. Because autonomy disrupts hierarchy.

All this to say, Black woman, we often talk about “breaking generational curses” when we’re discussing how we handle our families, our finances, and what we tolerate in romantic relationships.

But this transgenerational curse of being stuck, of being the savior, the stabilizer, the strong one at the expense of ourselves isone we don’t always name.

And maybe it’s time we do.

Maybe breaking the curse isn’t just about money or marriage or motherhood. Maybe it’s about releasing the need to be everything for everyone at the cost of ourselves. Maybe it’s about no longer performing strength while privately unraveling. Maybe it’s about refusing to be the emotional infrastructure for systems that would not protect us in return.

Black woman, you are not required to shrink to make someone else feel tall. You are not required to overextend to prove your loyalty. You are not required to sacrifice your autonomy just because history says you’re strong enough to survive it.

Strength without choice is survival. Strength with choice is sovereignty, and sovereignty will always intimidate those who benefited from your exhaustion.

So choose yourself. Choose wisely. Choose slowly. Choose in alignment. You are not breaking curses just for you. You are breaking patterns for every little Black girl watching you decide that being “the fixer” no longer means fixing everyone but yourself.

That’s true power.

(Circa ‘96. She did what needed to be done)

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My husband really is the bomb. The last two weeks have been a LOT and while it hasn’t been all bad, it’s been hard on my body and my mind. That man looked at me while we were on the couch and told me he was sending our baby to his grandma’s for the night and I couldn’t have been more thankful. Not only did it give me time to myself, it gave me time to really rest. I mean, we slept in, I took a long nap, we got to clean and just spend time together lounging around.

One thing that I really have been wanting to do is clean out my closet. Now, I never have time to do this as you can imagine. We have a one-year-old. Enough said. So I never get the time I really need to sit and determine what I want to keep and what needs to go. It’s always in the back of my mind.

I’ve collected a lot of things over the years, but my shoes have always been the problem. Like most Black women, my grandmother and mother passed down some real expensive habits. The only thing that saves me is my husband and the fact that I’ve had locs for seven years. My maintenance bill isn’t as high as it could be. That just gets shifted to other places: random DIY purchases, fragrances, and shoes out the behind (I leave my bags for my man), which can cause a bit of clutter, a bit of cloudiness to my closet if you’re following.

Because of that, we’ve always had storage issues. No matter where we moved, we didn’t have enough storage space to hold all of our stuff combined. When we first moved it was cute, but now that we’re grown and established, it was time to make some adjustments.

I love playing the game of “try it on” with my man because he’s honest enough that I’ll actually give some things away. Now, every year I donate clothes, bags, and shoes, but I hadn’t really gone through them thoroughly to see if these are things I actually want to keep, or if I just wanted the illusion of having a lot to choose from. I’ve never gone through the items enough to determine whether or not they’re still good for me, or if they match my personal style.

I came to the conclusion that my comfort, my inability to choose, is creating more problems than it’s worth. Pair by pair and fit by fit, I ended up clearing out two bags of shoes alone and a few clothing items that I know I’m going to continue to bypass for newer ones anyway.

And as I stood there looking at what was left, I realized this wasn’t really about shoes. It was about capacity. It was about making room. I can’t keep asking God for expansion, clarity, or peace while holding on to things that crowd my space and my spirit. At some point, stewardship requires honesty. And honesty requires release.

They say you have to let go of what no longer serves you. While I dragged those two bags to my trunk, I legitimately started to feel ease, a little peace if you will. There was something freeing about getting rid of things I haven’t touched in years. I had so much joy, which is crazy because we’re just talking about giving away clothes here, but to let go of things that I once used to define me felt great.

Because in life, I have decided to do the same.

God isn’t going to place more before you if you won’t give up what no longer serves you, what no longer aligns. Sometimes that’s people. Other times we’re talking about habits and things that we’ve self-inflicted on others and ourselves. I have decided that outside of my man and God, the decisions I make have to be aligned as well. Those decisions impact my physical, mental, and spiritual health. Those are just as important.

I said all this to say, clear things out that really make no sense to keep. Read, slow down, listen, meditate, and decide for yourself how you’ll steward God’s blessings for you. Anything He gives, peace of mind included, is a blessing you should always want to keep.

And as this week begins, I pray you find the courage to release what’s crowding you. I pray you don’t confuse comfort with calling. I pray you make space in your home and in your heart for what God is trying to hand you next. May your week begin lighter than the last one ended. May your mind be clear, your spirit steady, and your capacity protected.

At some point

She chose to quiet

The voice reminding

Her that her inadequacy

Was birthed out of

Someone else’s suffering

Someone else’s indecision

And from the womb

Without an ounce

Of care

Without anyone

But her mama

Knowing what

She would

Birth

She learned early

how to carry blame

that was never assigned to her name.

She learned how to shrink

before she was measured.

How to apologize

before she was accused.

She chose to quiet that voice

because it was easier

than unraveling it.

Easier than admitting

the fracture

was inherited.

But silence

does not erase origin.

She has found peace

In this.

— 6:12 AM, Still becoming.

And there is a difference.

Leah still chose to tend the field and do what she needed to do in the meantime. She bore children. She kept living. She kept building. She kept showing up. She did not collapse under the weight of not being preferred. She showed Rachel, and honestly all of us, that she did not need validation or approval because she knew God would remember her.

That part did something to me.

Black woman, the Lord is going to deliver you. I’m speaking to myself more than I’m speaking to you right now. You’re probably wondering why there’s such a heavy burden to transition and not even in the physical sense. We’re talking mindset. We’re talking about the shift that happens when you finally decide you are not begging to be picked anymore. When you stop auditioning. When you stop shrinking so someone else can feel taller.

I hope you’ve also been in a space where you’ve found yourself settled into who you are and you know what you want. You’ve set boundaries and said no in the places you needed to, yes? Okay. Great. That in itself has probably created problems. It probably disrupted dynamics that benefited from your silence. It probably exposed who was only comfortable with you when you were unsure of yourself. That discomfort? That’s not failure. That’s alignment.

Just like Leah and Rachel, it’s easy to see being “picked” as the answer. We think if they choose us, if they validate us, if they say we belong, then everything will make sense. But sometimes it isn’t the answer. Sometimes, not being picked is a blessing in itself. Sometimes being overlooked is divine protection. There are always things that we don’t see working for our good. There are always moments where God is rearranging rooms without our knowing, simply to protect us from sitting at tables that would have starved us.

I believe that from the bottom of my heart.

So maybe Laban forgot you. Maybe they passed your name over. Maybe they didn’t return the call. Maybe the opportunity went somewhere else. That’s alright. At the end of the day, you really have to sit and think about it. You don’t need them (and I’m sure they know it).

It’s nice to have them. It’s nice to be in community. We are not meant to do life alone. But seeking validation or needing to know if they approve of how you move and what you think is an unnecessary and forceful step that you need to get away from. That constant self-editing? That over-explaining? That is a form of over-controlling and over-policing parts of your life that only God has control over. So, release it.

There’s a reason why God blessed you in the first place. You have proven that you’re good enough. You’re worthy enough. You are already equipped for the field you’ve been assigned to. There is nothing that will stop you from going where God intended. Delays do not equal denial. Silence does not equal absence. Being unseen by them does not mean you are unseen by Him.

Please know that at the end of the day, those who came before us made it possible for us to move throughout these systems in ways we’ve never been able to before. We are walking through doors that cost someone else everything. Is it always equitable? Not at all. Is it always fair? Absolutely not. But you do not dishonor their sacrifice by standing firm in who you are. Put it down. Put down the need to be selected. Put down the urge to chase what is not chasing you.

Put down the fear that you missed something.

God is going to blow your mind regardless.

Stand still and till the land until it’s time for your harvest, and when it comes, it won’t be because you were picked. It will be because you were remembered.

It looked normal on the calendar. It sounded normal when I explained it. But internally? It was something else. It was one of those conversations where you feel something shift in your spirit mid sentence. At this point in my journey, I’m not really looking for too much except exposure. Not exposure in the performative sense. Not clout. Not vanity metrics. I’m looking for proximity to rooms that expand my thinking. Rooms that stretch me. Rooms that force me to articulate my mission clearly. As my peer Cari says all the time “social captial is king”.

I’m part of an executive director cohort right now, and they call it an accelerator. And let me tell you, they were not exaggerating. This season is stretching me in ways I didn’t know I needed. There is no hiding in an accelerator. There is no coasting. You either grow or you get exposed.

And in this meeting, part of me was reluctant to put a label on my organization. That hesitation wasn’t confusion. It was transition.

I’m in this strange space where I’ve figured out how I want to brand myself and my organization at the same time. They are intertwined, but they are not identical. And that tension? It’s been fun. It’s been creative. It’s been challenging. It’s also been revealing because as I’m going through this personal and professional development process, I’m learning a lot about myself.

Not just what I can build.

But what I’ve been afraid to say.

As I was explaining my goals and mission to him, I felt a shift in the conversation. You know when alignment happens and it almost feels spiritual? That’s what it was. It was like the air in the room changed. I started speaking more freely and more honestly.

And I said, casually:

“Well, I’m a nonprofit… but I don’t like to lead with that.”

Baby. He got in my behind.

Not disrespectfully. Not condescending. But firmly. Directly. The way someone does when they see you shrinking and refuse to let you do it in front of them.

He told me I need to stand firm in what I do and in who I am. He told me to say exactly what it is I need to say, to stop softening the language around my calling. He reminded me to stop minimizing the work because I’m afraid of how it might be received.

And I realized something in that moment.

If I hadn’t said it plainly, I would not have walked out of that meeting with a partnership.

There have been too many moments in professional spaces where I’ve held back.

Held back because I was afraid of looking like I was doing too much.

Held back because I was afraid of saying too much.

Held back because I didn’t want to be perceived as “a lot.”

But recently, I’ve come to a hard truth.

I haven’t been saying enough. For a long time, I’ve tried to ride the coattails of other people’s words about me. Whether those words were positive or negative, they carried weight. Too much weight. I let what people said in rooms I wasn’t in shape how I moved in rooms I was in and that’s dangerous.

When you build your identity on other people’s commentary, goals, and vision, you give them control over your trajectory and I am no longer building my legacy on anyone else’s. This requires too much control on their part. That gives them too much power.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: no one is bigger than the program.

Not access. Not proximity. Not personality. Not position.

Yes, what they say in rooms when I’m not there matters. I’m not naive to that. But what others mention about me in rooms should never carry more weight than what I have made clear with my own mouth. I cannot rely on someone else’s emotions, decisions, or whatever else to determine who I am called to be in this life. I did that for five years. I’m not doing it again.

So I’m taking the reins back concerning my professional ability and movement.

And if I’m honest? It hurts.

There is grief in realizing the version of the dream you once had wasn’t aligned with the assignment God actually placed in your hand.

There is grief in realizing you were listening to something, but it wasn’t Him.

When the banker (shoutout to Allen) started talking, he made me so comfortable that I ended up telling him a few things straight up. I told him, I’m not even looking for money right now. I’m looking to build social capital.

And that statement? That’s my dissertation work. That’s my problem of pratice.

That’s ten years of matriculating through the education space.

That’s understanding systems.

That’s understanding power.

That’s understanding that sometimes what you need most isn’t a check, it’s credibility, visibility, positioning.

Right now, I’m in a moment that feels powerful.

It’s not loud.

It’s not arrogant.

It’s powerful.

I can feel what my grandmother and great-grandmother were fighting for in my veins. My grandmother is from Oklahoma. Her mother was born during the Great Depression. There are days I feel their endurance in my body. Their sacrifice in my lungs. It feels supernatural, like something ancestral is rising in me that refuses to be minimized.

We talk about standing ten toes down, but why would I expect anyone to go harder for my mission than me? Why would I allow God to place something in the palm of my hand and then move like it’s fragile? Like it’s optional? Like it needs permission?

Even in professional spaces, I’m on what my husband calls a “clear it up” run. I’m seeking clarity in relationships. Clarifying roles. Clarifying expectations. Making sure I’m not overplaying or underplaying my part because I have a tendency to do that.

I’m not going to shrink.

I’m not going to overcompensate and I’m not going to dim passion so everyone else feels comfortable, and that leaves me empty. It feels like my passion gets pimped and yes, that’s partially my fault…but these conversations have been waking me up.

Through this meeting, I realized something I should have known:

My dreams and my goals are just as real and as big as anyone else’s.

Nothing is bigger than the program.

I’ve tried to slow down my own trajectory to move in a way that felt safe. I’ve tried to move quietly to not “disturb” rooms, but no more.

I’m grateful to God that I can hear His voice clearly amidst all the foolishness happening in the world. It amazes me that even while everything feels like it’s on fire, I’m leaning into peace.

Peace does not mean passivity.

Peace comes holy disruption with clarity comes conflict and I am willing to accept whatever comes with this next phase.

And to my biggest haters because yes, I do in fact have them, get with it, or get lost.

Here’s my advice to you:

Sometimes things change and sometimes you outgrow the niche they boxed you into. Sometimes you realize you were praying for a room that was only ever meant to be a hallway and I know their silence hurt you. I know you put in the work and it feels like it was for nothing, but it wasn’t.

It’s all part of it.

But like Allen told me, and like I’m telling you, say what you mean. Mean what you say. Stand firm in what you do because your work matters. Your leadership is real even if it’s not acknowledge yet.

I want you to walk in your truth and hold tight to your mission and your vision.

Most of all, don’t let anyone, not fear, not silence, not proximity, not power, deter you from what God has placed inside of you.

Even if they don’t see the leadership in you yet.

Go do it yourself anyway.

It’s Black History Month, and I love this month like every other Black person should. But this year feels different.

I’ve been going through it in a good way. The kind of going through it that happens when you’re on the edge of 29 and your spirit starts asking harder questions than your ego can answer. I’ve been writing more. Listening more closely to the people who love me. Paying attention to the parts of myself that need healing not for productivity, not for survival, but simply so I can be a good human to the people around me.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know this season has been full of reflection. I let a little secret slip in one of my paid posts recently, and working through that truth has cracked open memories I hadn’t planned to revisit, but probably needed to. So here’s a bit of backstory.

I was born in Baltimore. My father is Dominican (yes, Latina mami, don’t get it twisted), my mother is Black American, and my family is rooted in Oklahoma and parts of Texas, Ada and Colgate, specifically. I spent a short time in foster care before my grandmother came and got me. And being raised by my grandmother meant being raised by her mother too, my great-grandmother along with great-aunts and uncles who had lived long, complicated lives before I ever showed up.

Everyone around me was older. Seasoned. Set in their ways. I have one cousin my age, and we grew up like siblings, but even then, our lives looked wildly different. Black. Chickasaw Indian. White. What a time.

That contrast became even sharper when my mama made the choice to move us to Park Heights while I was still really young. Imagine a little girl raised around prim, proper, deeply church-rooted Black elders suddenly navigating a neighborhood that required a different kind of awareness to survive. That woman was wild. Loving, but wild.

And because of that move, I saw and experienced things a ten-year-old probably shouldn’t have. I won’t go into details. Whatever you assumed while reading that, run with it.

At the same time, my grandmother raised us in an all-white world. And when I say all white, I mean mimicked white Southern Baptist church culture, transplanted straight into Baltimore. A few years ago, I wrote a blog about that experience, the way the church used me as a Black pawn, the way my voice became a problem once I named the truth. That post went viral. Amanda Seales reposted it. People loved it. The church folks hated it. It was fun for the two seconds it lasted.

But the reality is, growing up in white churches and attending nothing but PWIs. I’ve never been to an HBCU in my life. I struggled deeply with my identity. Even now, the word “Oreo,” even as a joke, offends me. Because what exactly is funny about being shaped by environments I didn’t choose? How are you mocking something I had no control over?

I got all of it. The side eye. The jokes. The “you talk white.” And because of that, I learned how to fit in anywhere. I learned how to code switch before I knew the word for it. I learned how to read rooms. I learned how to survive.

I also forced myself into a kind of self-assigned curriculum. I became hyper-aware of microaggressions. Intentional about the classes I took, the books I read, the music I consumed in undergrad. It felt like I was enrolling myself in a crash course called How to Be Black 101, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

And here’s what that course has taught me in my 29 years.

Being Black is not a performance.
There is no syllabus. No final exam. No single way to show up correctly. The moment I stopped trying to prove my Blackness to other people was the moment I started to feel at home in my body. My proximity to whiteness wasn’t a choice I made as a child. My exposure to danger wasn’t a badge of honor. My softness is not a betrayal.

Respectability politics are just another cage.
Being well spoken, poised, palatable, none of that saved anyone. It just delayed the harm. I learned how to make myself small and acceptable early on, and I learned later that comfort is often the enemy of truth.

Blackness is allowed to hold contradictions.
I can love my grandmother’s hymns and still name the harm the church caused me. I can navigate white spaces fluently and still reject them as a standard. I can honor my Dominican roots, my Black American lineage, my Chickasaw ancestry, and still say: I don’t owe anyone an explanation.

Survival is not the same as healing.
I was exceptional at surviving. Reading rooms. Managing tone. Knowing when silence was safer than honesty. But survival skills harden when you never put them down. Healing has required me to unlearn urgency, hyper vigilance, and the belief that my value is tied to usefulness.

Proximity to trauma does not equal authenticity.
Seeing things early doesn’t make you more real. It just means your nervous system learned lessons it never consented to. Pain is not a rite of passage. It’s just pain.

And Black joy?
Black joy is not frivolous. It’s strategic. Rest. Laughter. Writing with no audience in mind. Loving my people loudly. Choosing softness anyway. These are acts of refusal in a world that expects Black women to be endlessly resilient and eternally exhausted.

The biggest lesson, though, is this:
I don’t owe anyone an origin story to justify who I am now.

This Black History Month feels different because I’m no longer trying to locate myself inside history. I know I belong here. I am history, living, breathing, complicated, unfinished.

And for the first time in a long time, that feels like enough.

My therapist knows me well, the kind of well that comes from years, not sessions. We’ve been together since 2020, and let me tell you, she is serious about her work. Serious about me. I owe a lot of my healing to her. Truly.

But anyway.

I told her something that surprised even me, it gives me anxiety to reach out or tell folk when something good happens. When I experience a win, especially a small one, I hesitate. I second guess. I hold it in. And instead of reaching for the people who know me, I turn to strangers.

I’ll write a post, a thread, or even turn to space.

Because strangers don’t flinch at your joy. They don’t ask you to explain it. They don’t shrink it to make themselves more comfortable.

There was a meeting once at my former school. Leadership sat around, evaluated my teaching, and said I was excellent… but cocky.

I’m a words girl.

Words carry weight.

And that one stayed, but why would that matter?

Because my life has been full of people, really women, commenting on my confidence. Policing it. Questioning it. Naming it as something that needed to be softened or managed. Growing up in a white church didn’t help, but that’s a story for another day. Either way, the people I thought were close to me (not friends, more proximity) often said things that felt like they chipped away at something God gave me freely.

So now I get nervous to share wins, even small ones.

I lose in private. A lot.

Especially in 2024 and 2025, when it felt like I was losing most everything around me, including my mind. And still, I carried it well. Too well.

That part is on me.

I didn’t share.

But who wants to feel like they lack sympathy or empathy for others and what’s happening around us?

For instance, It took me five years to have my son.

Five years of quiet prayers.

Five years of holding my breath.

Five years of learning how to survive disappointment without becoming bitter.

So when it feels like it takes me a long time to win and I finally do, I don’t know where to put it.

Joy feels loud.

Confidence feels risky.

Celebration feels like an invitation for correction, and maybe that’s what the Sunday scaries really are for me. Not fear of the week ahead, but fear of being seen in moments of goodness. Fear that peace will be interrupted. That calm will be questioned. That confidence will be mistaken for arrogance.

So tonight, calming my mind looks like this: letting good things be good and a win without apology.

I’m trusting that my confidence is not pride, it’s evidence of survival, growth, and grace and the ten years I’ve put into this craft

Restoration doesn’t always come with answers.

Sometimes it comes with permission.

To rest.

To exhale.

To let joy take up space.

Even now.

Now, let me put a pin there.

The world is absolutely on fire, and we have an administration that truly does not care. It’s becoming more evident that the United States of Amerikkka has invoked the next phase of what feels like a means to the end. And to be even MORE clear: it’s ABOLISH ICE, allow Black journalists to say what they’re allowed and capable of saying without getting arrested, and y’all should’ve listened to the 92%. ANYWAY, that aside, the world that my husband and I have been carefully and craftfully creating has been nothing but amazing. There has been so much intention, love, care, and stability put in place for our son and for us that I really can’t believe he and I are doing this. From the computer lab in college to all this. God is good.

Not only has He been good to us collectively, God has been especially good to me. A few weeks ago, I had a few conversations that changed my life. Thet hurt my feelings, triggered me real bad (I felt betrayed LOL), but they offered me a different perspective, exposed some things I needed to see for myself, and honestly launched me into the next phase of my career and professional development. After talking to God, crying, and overthinking (I’m getting it together), I decided that I’m going to do things differently than normal because of this small and gentle reminder.

In my King’s Day blog, my husband offered me a perspective on my story that I hadn’t thought about myself. It caused me to think a bit deeper about where God has actually brought me from, deeper than just saying it every Sunday in church. My mama was 14 when she had me (hey girl! I’m telling our story AGAIN, so sit tight bookie), and my girl was trying to figure it out herself. I cannot imagine being 14 and telling MY grandmother, her mother, that she was pregnant. That lady is crazy. But in her adolescence, she was also trying to figure it out. And in the process, I experienced a lot of things that I truly can’t say I share with anyone else, not even my baby sister. We were living a certain way, a certain lifestyle that she tried to hide from me, and she did a great job until it all caught up to her my junior year of high school.

All jokes aside, I started to realize how young my mama actually was. Trying to figure it out. Trying to make a way for herself. Trying to get from up under theologies and people who told her to get rid of me, that I would be the greatest mistake of her life. That takes a lot for a child.

I won’t go into much else, but in my reflection after therapy this week, God showed me an image in my mind. The display was split, and I was walking closer toward the right side, down a really long path. On the left of me was nothing but fire. The flames were HOT on my face, like really about to burn my lashes off hot. I could feel the heat, but it never touched me. I could smell it, even taste some smoke in my mouth. I coughed a few times. But the smell from the right side, the field full of flowers, my favorite plants, gave me some reprieve.

It was almost like… God was showing me that I have ALWAYS been this close to the fire. I’ve always had the stench of smoke and tar on my body, so what’s different about this present situation? I’ve always been able to see the danger, look at it dead in the face, and still succeed and move forward anyway. I’ve always been able to live in abundance in the physical, even when it shouldn’t have been that way according to what was happening around us.

So the lesson for me was that even in my decision-making, even in my overthinking and worrying, God has always allowed me to see the flames and smoke rise, but they’ve never actually impacted my ability to see and move right on through.

It’s not cliché. God is looking out for you in ways you’ll never be able to understand. Any decision, any opportunity, anything that is yours will be, no matter how daunting, no matter how big the fire looks.

May God keep you steady when the fire feels close.
May He sharpen your sight without hardening your heart.
May you celebrate what has already answered, even while you wait on what’s still forming.
May you remember that seeing the flames does not mean they get to touch you.
And may you keep walking, toward the flowers, toward the work, toward the life that is already making room for you.

Amen.

We have a snow day here in Baltimore, and I am unusually excited! Not because of the quiet streets or the slowed pace, but because it is my one year old’s first time seeing snow. Watching him experience something new reminds me how much wonder still exists when we allow ourselves to pause. It also means my husband and I have been gifted two uninterrupted days together, space to be creative, to rest, to release, to just be.

I spent part of today working on a case study analysis I have been assigned to build over the semester. Truthfully, I am annoyed with myself for choosing this particular case. And yet, I know better than to dismiss the things that resist me. Sometimes what irritates us is precisely what we need to sit with the longest.

There is an unrealistic expectation placed on Black women, especially those of us who live at the intersections. My problem of practice names what so many of us already know: Black women are consistently centered in inclusion work, equitable practice, and quality management, while simultaneously being asked to participate in the institutional silence that allows organizations to function as they do. In community spaces especially, there is an unspoken assumption that we should simply be willing: willing to do the work, willing to absorb the gaps, willing to accept whatever comes with it.

We call it flexibility.
But too often, flexibility is not neutral.

It is the direct consequence of structurally advantaged people retaining positional power while outsourcing responsibility. Black women are expected to acknowledge leadership aspirations and organizational needs even when there is no articulation of boundaries, authority, or protection, despite the fact that we are often the very ones offering pathways toward resolution.

Even though this is the foundation of my academic work, I sometimes forget that this is also my real life. This is not theory. This is not abstract. From the moment I stepped into this field in 2016 until now, I have lived this problem of practice. I think about it constantly. I dream about it. I wrestle with it. And while I do carry some privilege based on how and where I was raised, the reality remains: this work is deeply personal, deeply exhausting, and deeply familiar to Black women in ways that do not require explanation.

There is an external pressure, spoken and unspoken that we should be grateful simply because we have “made it this far.” But at what point do our hearts get to be heard? There is a real emotional and mental toll that comes with being expected to provide stability, care, and institutional continuity without commensurate authority and often without protection. And still, we steward what is placed in our hands with excellence. We offer perspectives shaped by lived experience, discernment, and care that cannot be replicated.

When I study like this, when I search, reflect, and sit with these ideas something familiar rises in me. My inner Octavia. My inner Toni. My inner bell. It may sound dramatic, but there is a flow that comes when I engage this work honestly. Studying becomes reflection. Reflection becomes meditation. Meditation becomes honor to myself, to my loved ones, and to my community.

And while there may be a lack of institutional accountability in our education systems, in our organizations, and in the world more broadly, we are not without agency. We have the power to change what no longer serves us. We have the authority to remove ourselves from the suffocating belief that suffering is the price of purpose. We are allowed to disengage emotionally and sometimes structurally in the name of protection and obedience to the mission God has placed in our hands.

I have been speaking about transitions often lately because every transition begins in the mind. Last July, I made a decision: it would be the last time I allowed anything to deter me from breaking down barriers, using my voice, and advocating not only for the organizations I serve, but for myself.

Once a woman changes her mind, it is over.
And to that, I say: good luck and God bless.

It is my prayer that you choose to honor yourself. Work diligently, because there is no other reason God would have assigned this work to your hands. Be well.

-Kendrick Lamar, Pulizter Prize Winner 2018 (2025)

I’m working on two really big projects right now.

The first is deeply personal: I officially began my dissertation research this semester. I’m still deciding whether my findings will live as their own blog series, because honestly reading and learning through two new epistemological lenses has shifted more than just my research. It has changed how I understand leadership, power, and my own life.

One lens in particular has been exposing how systemic inequities in leadership are not accidental, they are designed that way. That realization is infuriating, yes. But it has also reawakened something in me. I feel like 2016/2017 Shawna again, and I love her. She was sharp, unapologetic, and awake. I recognize her.

The second project is one that lives outside of myself but sits very close to my heart. I probably need to schedule time with my therapist (paid subscribers already know), because this work has required me to be deeply honest with myself first, and then with everyone else.

I’ve been operating on a high since the year began. I mentioned this in my last post, but God has been blessing the McMillan household in ways that feel both overwhelming and affirming. He has shown us what life can look like if we stay the course, and for the first time, I am not afraid of what’s ahead. I’m excited.

But with clarity comes responsibility.

That responsibility is what made me feel it was time to explain why I chose the name for my nonprofit organization.

The Weight and Power of a Name

One day, on the stairmaster of all places, I heard God speak something to me that I’ve carried ever since. It brought me directly to Genesis 12:1–2, when God tells Abraham that He will make his name great and bless him through many nations.

That word stayed with me.

Not long after, in 2019, I started an all-girls mentorship group focused on something deceptively simple but deeply radical: helping young girls understand that their names are not “ghetto,” not “too much,” and not “too hard to pronounce.” Their names carried power. That was the mission.

We were intentional about safety. About care. About presence. I had some of the best partners I could have asked for (shoutout to my girl Kei), and together we made sure those girls felt seen and protected. What they didn’t know was that they were shaping me just as much as I was shaping them.

That’s when the idea of a name became sacred to me.

So sacred, in fact, that I still laugh about how badly I wanted to fight Howard for not letting me hyphenate my last name. I was heated. (Turns out, it really wasn’t that serious but it tells you how deeply I was thinking about identity.)

Reclaiming My Own Name

For years, I allowed people to call me anything.

They mispronounced my name. Lied on my name. Dragged my name through the dirt. I let it happen. Still just letting it happen (Exodus 14:14).

And yet the name my mother gave me, the one she hand-picked when she was eight years old, has always carried something special. I just hadn’t fully honored it.

When I first started my business, I called it Advocate Baltimore. At the time, it fit. It described the work I was doing and the place I was serving. But it never felt complete. It didn’t fully align with the calling God had placed on my life.

It was temporary. Limited. It put a ceiling on the work.

I rebranded repeatedly. Changed logos. Tweaked concepts. Shifted the mission. All in hopes that something, anything, would click. That approval would come. That the money would follow.

But eventually, it became clear: Advocate Baltimore wasn’t enough.

Not because the work wasn’t meaningful but because the name was out of alignment.

When Alignment Brings Influence

God reminded me of something simple and sobering.

I am an advocate.

I had spent so much time trying to name the work that I almost forgot to stand fully in who I already was. Things weren’t working because even the name attached to the work was out of alignment with the truth of my calling.

And alignment matters, because names carry influence.

Whether we like it or not, our names move in rooms we haven’t entered yet. They introduce us before we arrive. They linger after we leave. People remember how your name made them feel long after they forget the details.

At the end of the day, all you truly have is your name.

Your titles can change. Your roles will shift. Platforms grow and fade. But your name—your integrity, your consistency, your witness follows you everywhere. That’s why it has to be protected.

This is why I advocate the way I do.

Because I am deeply aware of the influence my name carries, and I take that responsibility seriously. I want every family, every student, every community I serve to feel the weight and worth of their own name. Not as a burden, but as a birthright.

Your name is not disposable.
Your story is not up for negotiation.
Your voice is not something to be diluted for comfort.

Advocacy, for me, is not just about access or systems or policy though those matter deeply. It is about stewardship. About handling people’s stories with care. About ensuring that when my name is attached to something, it leaves people stronger, clearer, and more affirmed than before.

Because influence is inevitable.

And if all I have is my name, then I will use it to protect others and teach them how to protect their own.

My husband knows me well enough to know that at this point in my life, I don’t really want people in my business. I’ve learned the hard way over and over what happens when you let people too far in, too fast. I’ve trusted folks with my processing, my venting, my becoming, only to realize later that my vulnerability had been turned into data. Something to be studied. Something to be weaponized. I don’t play that. At all.

And yet.

Now that I’m in the nonprofit space with my own organization, I’m being asked to move differently. Marketing. Visibility. Storytelling. All the things that require you to open doors you spent years learning how to lock. I struggle there. Not because I don’t understand the assignment, but because I understand myself.

I’ve lived a lot of life. Some of it didn’t even register as trauma until years later because that’s what survival does. It keeps you moving until your body decides it’s safe enough to remember. One of the most pivotal moments in my life happened when I was sixteen, when my mama got booked for the last time (we thank God). At first, it felt like everything fell apart. In reality, it was the beginning of something painfully necessary and eventually beautiful.

My mama and I are good now. That’s my girl. I would go to the edge of the earth for her. My husband loves her, too. There were Sundays when the three of us would sit around, and she’d tell him stories, even stories I had never even heard. Stories about when we lived out west, when we were outside, and when she was outside. I was shocked. One story in particular hit me so hard I realized I had completely blocked it out. Trauma will do that. I’ll unpack that more for my paid subscribers, but what I’ll say here is this: I finally understand why she moved the way she did. That moment wasn’t the whole story, it was just one chapter. From the time we moved west, my life went sideways in ways I didn’t yet have language for.

I’ve always been afraid to tell my story. Afraid to expose the lowest, messiest, most misunderstood parts of my truth. I told myself it was about privacy. I told myself people would judge. But the real fear was pity. I don’t want anyone attaching themselves to me because they feel sorry for me. I’ve had people ask me, in real life, if I even have a family because I’ve chosen to keep large pieces of myself protected. And to my people who do know me now: we’ve grown. I love us. Truly. Shoutout to y’all.

Recently, my husband and I had a conversation. He reminded me that running my own organization means my story isn’t just mine anymore, it’s part of the testimony. God has used my lived experience to give me vision, discernment, and the ability to see people fully. Across race. Across class. Across circumstance. My influence has always been quiet, intentional, and relational. I share selectively because God built this story with precision. Not everyone can carry it responsibly.

But my husband who is, genuinely, the best writer on my team and my favorite at that, offered to help tell it. Not in a way that strips me bare, but in a way that honors my strength, my agency, and my power. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful to feel seen, not consumed. Empowered, not exposed.

So. It’s time.

Today is King Day. A day that reminds us that testimony is communal, that truth-telling is an act of service, and that leadership is grown in love and courage. I’ll be sharing my story on Instagram (@shawnarmcmillan), and it’s my prayer that it blesses you. Not as spectacle, but as context. As insight into who I am as an advocate. As a community girl. As someone who believes deeply that serving others is not just what I do, it’s my superpower.

As always, take what you need. Leave the rest. And be gentle with yourself today.

Last year, I applied to three leadership programs and somehow ended up loving all three.

My goal for 2025, both personally and professionally, was networking, but not the surface-level, “I know so-and-so through so-and-so” kind. I mean the kind of relationship-building that requires presence. Intention. Staying after the room clears. Following up when it would be easier not to.

I worked to build relationships rooted in me: my work, my voice, my consistency, not proximity to someone else’s name or platform. I wanted to know that when I entered a room, it was because I belonged there.

There is something powerful about having your own community. People who will plug you. Speak your name when you’re not in the room. Hold space for you without needing anything in return. That kind of support is unmatched.

At the closing ceremony of one of those programs, a quiet realization settled in:
I needed a mentor.

Not someone who already knew me too well.
Not someone who would soften the truth.
But someone objective. Someone who could call me out without consequence, guide me without ego, and lead me when I needed direction more than affirmation.

That day, I took a leap of faith. And I’m grateful I did.

On the first day of the program, one woman shared a story so compelling the entire room shifted. I cried. We cried. It was one of those moments where empathy fills the air and sits heavy on your chest.

From that moment on, I paid attention to her. (That sounds wild, y’all. I know. But I did. LOL.) There was something about her spirit that drew me in. She looked like me. Had locs like me. And carried herself in a way that felt familiar, like a future version of myself quietly saying, keep going.

At face value, we couldn’t have seemed more different. If “introvert” could be written across her forehead, it probably would be. She’s soft-spoken, not soft, just measured. But over time, we laughed more. Shared more. And realized we were connected in ways that reached back years…years. (Shoutout to Urban Teachers back when it was UT. If you know, you know.)

On the last day, I finally gathered the courage to ask her to be my mentor.
I don’t know why I was so anxious because the ask itself wasn’t hard.

She said yes.
And everything shifted.

I didn’t yet understand how much I would need her guidance (*cue the tears*), but I’m thankful I asked anyway. There is no amount of money, no title, no job that compares to having a mentor who cheers for you, tells you the truth, stays in your behind when necessary, and loves you well enough to prepare you for what’s next.

So listen—
In 2026, you need a mentor.

I went a long time believing I didn’t. I tried a few relationships that didn’t quite fit. And like my therapist reminds me often: you’re allowed to reorder the shelf whenever you need to. With that in mind, here are a few things to carry with you as you look for a mentor this year, because yes, I’m serious. You need one.

1. Find a mentor who does not know you.

I know that sounds counterintuitive, almost wrong even.
But hear me out…

Your mentor should not come preloaded with your history. They shouldn’t already know your family, your past roles, your reputation, or the version of you that had to survive instead of lead. They need to meet who you are now, not who you’ve been explained to be.

Objectivity matters more than familiarity.

Mentorship gets muddy quickly when it’s built on proximity instead of purpose. When the relationship is grounded in shared circles, old dynamics, or emotional loyalty, truth starts to soften. Feedback becomes careful. Correction becomes conditional. And growth slows because no one wants to disrupt what already exists.

That doesn’t mean you can’t form a deep relationship. You likely will.
But the best mentorship is often birthed in neutrality, before attachment, before expectations, before the need to protect feelings.

A mentor who doesn’t know you can see you clearly. They can call out patterns without bias. They can challenge you without guilt. They can guide you without needing to preserve a version of you that no longer fits.

And that kind of clarity?
That’s where real growth begins.

2. They should look like you but they will not always sound like you.

Representation matters.

There is something affirming about being mentored by someone who understands your lived experience without explanation, someone who doesn’t need footnotes for your existence.

But don’t confuse likeness with agreement.

The right mentor will challenge you. They won’t always say what you want to hear. They won’t always affirm your instincts. And that’s not a flaw, that’s the work. Growth requires friction. It requires someone who can hold your reflection up to the light and say, this part needs sharpening.

They may not sound like you. They may move slower, speak quieter, think differently. Let that stretch you. Mentorship isn’t about being mirrored, it’s about being refined.

3. Choose someone with integrity. Full stop.

This one matters more than credentials.

Your mentor should be trustworthy. Someone whose word carries weight. Someone who honors confidentiality, respects boundaries, and handles influence with care. I’m not saying they need to be perfect because if that were the requirement, none of us would ever have a mentor. Laughably impossible.

But be mindful.

Mentorship is deeply personal. You will bring your questions, your fears, your unfinished thoughts, and your becoming into this space. That requires safety. It requires discernment. It requires someone who understands that guidance is not control, and access is not entitlement.

Choose someone whose character you respect, even when no one is watching.

Mentorship is not about access.
It’s about alignment.

It’s about choosing someone who can see you clearly, speak honestly, and walk with you without trying to shape you into themselves. Someone who understands that growth requires both grace and accountability. Someone who is not invested in who you used to be, but committed to who you are becoming.

If you’ve been hesitant, unsure, or convinced you could do this alone, this is your sign to reconsider. You don’t need more noise. You don’t need more opinions. You need wisdom. You need covering. You need someone who can help you name what’s next before you rush into it.

So yes, pray about it. Be intentional. Be patient.
And when the right mentor presents themselves, don’t overthink the ask.

Sometimes the leap is the lesson.

What if my principal found out?
What if they called the school for references?
What if word traveled faster than I could explain myself?

I was afraid to apply, afraid of what life would look like next, afraid of what it would mean to leave something I had worked so hard to become. Teaching in city schools was not just my job. It was my identity. I remember when I was in 2nd grade and my ELA teacher asked us to tell everyone why we chose the profession we wrote on our paper. Of course, well, y’all know what I wrote down. I wanted to do be in this field my whole life! I couldn’t imagine leaving…

For five years, I stood in classrooms that asked for everything. My patience, my creativity, my softness, my backbone. I arrived early. I stayed late. I learned how to read children beyond their data points and build inclusive environments for them. I learned how to love students who carried more than backpacks into the room. I learned how to teach when the system was under-resourced and over-demanding, when policies were written far from the communities they landed on.

So, I stayed.
I stayed because the kids deserved consistency.
I stayed because leaving felt like betrayal.
I stayed because I believed sacrifice was synonymous with commitment.

But somewhere between surviving and sustaining, something shifted.

Let me be clear: I did not leave because I didn’t care.

I left because caring deeply inside a system that refuses to care for its educators will eventually hollow you out. City schools taught me how to be resourceful, how to teach with urgency, how to advocate inside meetings that rarely moved fast enough for the families sitting in front of me. They also taught me how normalized burnout had become. How often exhaustion was reframed as dedication. How frequently Black women educators were expected to be everything: teacher, counselor, disciplinarian, translator, advocate without protection, without sustainability, and without rest.

I watched brilliant teachers disappear quietly at the end of the year.
I watched students cycle through adults who wanted to stay but couldn’t afford to.
I watched myself become smaller in spaces that demanded I be endlessly expansive.

And still, I told myself to push through.

There wasn’t one dramatic blow-up. There wasn’t a final argument or a slamming door. It was much slower than that. It was the anxiety that followed me home when I knew I would be calling in sick the next day. The Sundays that felt heavier than Mondays. The way my body knew before my mind admitted it.

I realized that I was no longer just tired, I was disconnected from myself.

And that scared me more than leaving ever could.

I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t know what to do next.
I was afraid because I did and it required me to walk away from something that had once been sacred.

Leaving the classroom was not quitting on children.
It was not abandoning public education.
It was not choosing ease over impact.

I need that to be understood.

Teachers are allowed to leave systems that harm them and still love students deeply. Both things can be true. They often are.

You Can Love Teaching and Still Leave the Classroom

This is the part we don’t say out loud enough. You can be a good teacher and still decide the classroom is no longer where you belong. You can honor your students and still refuse to be consumed by broken systems. You can choose yourself without betraying the work.

Leaving did not make me less committed to education.
It made me more honest about how change actually happens.

If you’re reading this while quietly considering your own next step know this: fear does not mean you are wrong. Sometimes it means you are standing at the edge of your becoming.