Premier Perspective...

Legacy sounds like something reserved for people with buildings named after them, foundations bearing their names, or biographies written about their lives.

I don’t think it is.

Legacy is the evidence that you were here. It’s what you taught, created, changed, protected, challenged, nurtured and passed forward. Sometimes it’s enormous. Sometimes it’s one person who moves through the world differently because she encountered you.

And the beautiful…and slightly uncomfortable…thing about legacy is that we’re creating ours long before anyone calls it one.

So what are you building with the life you’re living right now?

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1996 was 30 years ago…!!

I know. I don’t appreciate it either.

Somewhere in my head, the ’90s are still about fifteen years ago. The music still feels current. The memories don’t feel historic. And yet here we are, casually referring to 1996 as three decades ago like that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

That little realization sent me down a rabbit hole…not just about nostalgia, but about time and the strange way we measure our lives against it.

We attach deadlines to everything. By 30, I should have done this. By 40, I should have figured out that. By 50, surely I should be there by now.

But where exactly is there?

If something that feels like yesterday can actually be thirty years ago, maybe our relationship with time deserves a little grace. Maybe life isn’t late just because it didn’t happen according to the schedule we once imagined for ourselves.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately: the difference between getting older and running out of time. They aren’t the same thing.

And yes, I’ve thought about this enough that there’s a whole Premier Perspective episode brewing around it. Because once I started digging into 1996, the music, the memories, and what thirty years actually means...

Whew

We’ll talk.

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Premier Potential is growing beyond the coaching conversation.

Over the past several months, I’ve been intentionally expanding the ways Premier Potential Coaching Solutions can encourage, equip and empower women. That includes books and guided resources, long-form writing, new digital content, and now a growing video platform where we can have some of these conversations in a completely different way.

The mission hasn’t changed: helping women…especially Black women…move through their lives and careers with greater clarity, confidence and discernment.

The ways I’m delivering that mission are simply getting bigger.

Explore PPCS

One thing I want to be intentional about with this little corner of the internet is making sure I’m not the only voice you hear.

There are so many women creating, teaching, questioning, building, and sharing things that make me stop scrolling and actually pay attention. So from time to time, I’m going to use this space to introduce you to a few of them.

Worth a Follow:

voice I’ve been enjoying lately is IntentionalLiving, and her essay “How I Made Peace With Losing People” caught my attention.

She writes about the uncomfortable reality that not everyone who was meant to be part of one season of your life is meant to follow you into the next one.

And that doesn’t necessarily make the relationship a failure.

Sometimes you’ve changed. They’ve changed. The relationship has changed. And sometimes making peace with that is healthier than exhausting yourself trying to force a connection to remain what it once was.

If you’ve ever struggled with the question, “Do I keep fighting for this relationship…or accept that we’ve simply grown apart?” this is worth a read.

Read the essay here...

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I recently came across Heauxs’s Substack, and one essay in particular made me stop and sit with it: “Slow Sunday: The Quiet Practice of Forgiving Yourself.”

She writes about something many of us are very good at extending to other people but struggle to offer ourselves…grace. Not pretending we didn’t make mistakes or excusing choices we wish we’d made differently, but recognizing that accountability and lifelong self-punishment are not the same thing.

One line of thought especially stayed with me: sometimes we’re judging an earlier version of ourselves using wisdom she hadn’t learned yet.

Whew.

If you’ve ever looked back at something and thought, Girl, what were you THINKING? 😂 this one may be worth your time.

Read the essay here...

Follow Heauxs Who Bloom

Life gets busy. Inboxes get crowded. And sometimes something worth reading slips right on by.

Here are a few things I wrote this month that you may have missed…or might want to come back to:

You’re Not Behind. You’re Overloaded.

Before you decide you’re failing at life, consider another possibility: maybe you’re not behind at all…maybe you’re carrying entirely too damn much.

You're Not Behind. You're Overloaded.

The Empty Chair

Sometimes the hardest part of losing a relationship isn’t missing the person…it’s grieving the place you thought they would always have in your life.

The Empty Chair

Black America Lost an Auntie...

Dolly Parton’s passing got me thinking about something bigger than celebrity: who gets invited into our community, what true allyship looks like, and what it really takes to leave behind a legacy that people can feel.

Black America Lost an Auntie

Grab your tea, find a comfortable spot, and catch up when you have a minute.

Until next month’s pause...

Don’t wait to become a memory before you think about your legacy.

It’s already happening.

It’s in what you create, what you teach, who you encourage, what you stand for, and the way people feel after spending time with you.

You don’t have to change the whole world.

Changing someone’s world counts, too.

Keep building something worth leaving behind.

I’ll meet you back here next month.

~ Pennie, XO

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Your engagement helps more women find this space...and feel seen. 🎁 Need a boost of empowerment? Grab your freebie here: https://beacons.ai/pstew69 🌐 Want more of me? Visit my site at premierpotentialcoaching.com

Black America Lost an Auntie...And It Made Me Think About What We Leave Behind

Pennie Stewart — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:12:51 GMT

When the news broke that Dolly Parton had died, somewhere on the internet Black people collectively lost their minds.

There were reaction memes. Dramatic collapses. Fainting. Faces that said,

Wait. Not Dolly.

It made my heart swell…and I was happy and sad at the same time, because apparently Black America lost an auntie this week.

And after a little chuckle, I started thinking about why that reaction felt so natural.

How exactly did an 80-year-old white country singer from the hills of East Tennessee end up occupying this strange little corner of Black America’s heart? There was no meeting. Nobody took a vote. No committee issued Dolly Parton her honorary Black card.

Somewhere along the way, we just seemed to collectively decide: She good.

She Was Always in on the Joke

Part of it was undoubtedly Dolly herself. The hair. The nails. The rhinestones. The heels. The unapologetic more.

Dolly famously built her appearance around a woman in her hometown whom other people considered trashy. While the adults around her looked down on that woman, little Dolly apparently saw glamour. And then grew up and turned it into a brand.

There’s something about that I’ve always loved.

Dolly knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her. The blonde hair. The breasts. The makeup. The country accent. And she also knew what they didn’t see: the songwriter, the businesswoman, the woman smart enough to retain ownership of her work, the woman building an empire while people were still telling dumb-blonde jokes about her.

She once joked that she wasn’t offended by dumb-blonde jokes because she knew she wasn’t dumb…and she also knew she wasn’t blonde.

That’s somebody who understands the assignment. And that? Black folks understand. There’s something very familiar about knowing people have underestimated you while also knowing exactly who you are. Dolly never seemed particularly interested in shrinking herself to correct their assumptions. Sometimes she just let them be wrong.

I was a kid the first time I saw her…she was on Hee-Haw, all rhinestones and big hair and bigger laugh…and I remember thinking she must be playing a character. Nobody was really like that. Turns out she was.

I loved her most in duet, though. That voice next to Kenny Rogers’s felt like the whole point of harmony.

But Charm Isn’t Character

Being funny can make people like you. Being talented can make people admire you. Neither one earns trust. Black folks have a long, exhausting history of watching white public figures discover “concern” the moment it’s profitable or safe…a hashtag here, a donation there, gone by the next news cycle. We know the difference between a moment and a pattern. We’ve had to.

Dolly’s pattern held up.

When Whitney Houston’s version of I Will Always Love You became a phenomenon, Dolly…who’d written the song years earlier, used part of the royalties to buy property in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Nashville. She called it the house Whitney built.

But it was something else she said that stuck with me. She talked about being there with Whitney’s people, “who are my people as well.”

That’s different.

In the summer of 2020, with George Floyd’s murder still raw and the country arguing about whether Black Lives Matter was even a reasonable thing to say out loud, Dolly said it was. Publicly. Plainly. At a moment when plenty of country artists were calculating what it would cost them to stay quiet.

She talked openly about loving the LGBTQ+ people in her own family, without qualifiers.

She turned a painful fact about her own father, that he never learned to read, into the Imagination Library, which has put millions of books into other people’s children’s hands.

During the pandemic, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID-19 research that helped support development of the Moderna vaccine. And among the scientists instrumental in developing that vaccine technology was Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a Black woman immunologist from North Carolina. It’s the vaccine I get every year.

A rhinestone-covered country legend from the hills of Tennessee, and a brilliant Black scientist, occupying different corners of the same story. Life will give you some unexpected crossovers.

None of that, on its own, makes someone trustworthy. Plenty of people write one big check and call it a legacy. What makes Dolly different is that there wasn’t a single moment to point to…there was a pattern, decades long, that didn’t change depending on who was watching.

So I’ve stopped asking whether Dolly was an “ally.” I’m more interested in something simpler.

What does your life say you believe?

Not your hashtags. Not the statement somebody wrote for your organization. Not what you say when everybody’s watching.

What do your decisions say? Because eventually, the receipts become the reputation.

And Then I Started Thinking About Me

This is where Dolly’s death stopped being simply a celebrity story for me.

She was 80. And she was still creating. Still planning. Still interested. Still talking about things she wanted to do. Still imagining what might come next.

That detail hit me harder than I expected.

I’m a woman of a certain age…hot flashes and all, and that’s as specific as we’re getting today…and I think about creative runway more than I used to. There is a quiet little voice that occasionally asks:

Have I done enough yet?

Did I start some of this too late?

How much time do I really have to build everything I can see so clearly in my head?

I don’t think those questions belong only to me.

There’s a strange thing that happens as women get older. The world starts talking to us as though our lives should be narrowing at precisely the moment many of us finally know ourselves well enough to make them bigger. We’re supposed to have arrived already. Established. Settled. Finished.

I reject that.

Dolly Parton was still building at 80. Not because she hadn’t accomplished enough, good Lord, the woman had accomplished enough for several lifetimes. She kept building because apparently she wasn’t finished being curious.

And maybe that’s the part of her legacy I need right now.

Don’t Declare Yourself Finished While You’re Still Here

Legacy is often discussed as though it’s something reserved for extraordinary people. Foundations. Buildings with names on them. Millions of dollars donated. Awards displayed behind glass.

But I don’t think legacy begins there. I think it begins with a much smaller question:

Who knows something because you taught them? Who believes something about themselves because you encouraged them? What did you build because you knew what it felt like to go without it? What did you change because something once hurt you and you decided somebody coming behind you shouldn’t have to hurt the same way?

That’s why I keep returning to Dolly’s Imagination Library. Her father couldn’t read. That could have remained simply a painful fact in one family’s history. Instead, his daughter’s response became books in the hands of children he would never meet.

That’s legacy. Not perfection. Not fame. Transformation. Taking something you inherited and deciding what you’re going to do with it before you pass it forward.

So no, I don’t know how much creative runway I have. None of us knows how much time we have. And perhaps that’s precisely why I’m becoming less interested in measuring whether I’m “on time.”

I’m here. I’m interested. I’m still creating. I still have things I want to build, things I want to contribute, things I want to experience, and versions of myself I haven’t met yet.

So I’m not declaring myself finished while I’m still here.

And if you’re somewhere in the middle of your own becoming, I hope you don’t either.

Rest well, Auntie Dolly. Apparently, you left us one more thing to think about.

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The Empty Chair

Pennie Stewart — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:09:58 GMT

There is a particular kind of woman who can plan a room full of comfort for everybody else and still not know how to walk into it herself.

I know her well.

I have been her at least four times this month. I began imagining what it might look like to gather eight women in one room with no occasion to celebrate, no crisis to solve, and no expectation that anyone would be useful.

No birthday.

No bridal shower.

No promotion to toast.

No breakup requiring emergency wine, snacks, and a full investigation of text-message evidence.

No funeral.

No committee meeting disguised as fellowship.

No networking exercise where everybody has to explain what she does before anyone has bothered to ask who she is.

No icebreaker where each woman must share one interesting fact about herself, as if surviving the week was not interesting enough.

Just eight women agreeing to show up and do absolutely nothing that required them to be impressive, productive, helpful, prepared, polished, or in charge. We had been talking about the night in the group chat for weeks.

Because, you know, scheduling.

Getting eight grown women to agree on a date was more difficult than AP Math. One had to check the children’s calendar. Another needed to see whether her boss planned to ruin her Friday. Somebody had a hair appointment that could not be moved because she had already rescheduled it twice, and nobody in the chat was unreasonable enough to suggest she do it a third time.

Once we finally landed on a Friday, we still needed somewhere to meet. I offered my place because I had the room and did not want the location to become the next project we disagreed on. Somewhere between offering the house and opening the door, I quietly decided that made everybody’s comfort my responsibility.

Nobody asked me to create an experience.

Nobody requested mood lighting, a signature scent, or a menu with enough variety to accommodate allergies, preferences, and whatever food somebody had recently decided was responsible for every bad thing that had ever happened to her body.

The group-chat agreement had been simple.

Come over.

Bring yourself.

Do nothing useful for a few hours.

I interpreted that to mean I should spend most of Friday afternoon making certain nobody else had to lift a finger.

By six-thirty, the house smelled like clove, orange peel, and roasted chicken. Salmon sat warming in the oven beside greens, rice, and rolls wrapped in a cloth napkin. There was a salad full of things I had chopped carefully, sparkling water for the woman who did not drink, wine for the women who absolutely did, and tea because I refuse to host anything without giving the kettle a purpose.

I had even cleared the clutter from the side table, including several things I shoved into my bedroom and would later spend three days looking for. I set the dining table for eight and left enough room for serving dishes, wineglasses, teacups, and the elbows that would eventually find their way onto the table once everyone relaxed. A robin’s-egg-blue teacup sat on its matching saucer near one place setting. A thin gold line circled its rim, but I did not stop to study it. At that point, it was simply one more thing I had arranged before checking the oven again.

The first woman arrived twelve minutes after the time we had agreed upon, which barely qualified as late after everything it took to settle on the date. Her leave-out had told all her business, but we had all had those days. She still looked good.

She apologized for being late. Then she apologized for coming directly from work. Then she apologized for not bringing anything, even though the group chat had been very clear that nobody was supposed to bring anything.

Girl, please stop, I said in my head and gave her a warm smile.

“You are fine. Come in.”

She stood in the entryway with her purse pressed close to her body and her coat folded over one arm, waiting for instructions.

“Put your things anywhere.”

She looked around.

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere.”

It is a small thing, being told to put your things anywhere. Unless you have spent most of your life being careful about where you belong and how much room you are allowed to occupy once you get there.

In my head I have named her Shadow.

She moved through other people’s homes as though her presence might inconvenience the furniture. She stayed near the edges of conversations, made herself smaller whenever someone passed, and apologized whenever attention accidentally found her. If someone bumped into her, Shadow would be the one to say sorry. She chose the chair closest to the doorway and placed her coat across her lap.

The second woman arrived with lips that were a work of art. Her lip liner had been drawn with painstaking precision. The color sat exactly where it belonged, and the gloss carried the kind of shine that made me want to interrupt her greeting to ask what she used.

That’s Lips.

She carried herself with the easy polish of a woman who looked as though she had never misplaced an important document, missed a deadline, or typed “per my last email” without making the recipient reconsider every choice that had led to that moment.

She noticed the candle before she had fully removed her shoes.

“What is that?”

I told her.

She picked up the larger than necessary jar, read the label, and turned it over to see the price.

“It smells beautiful,” she said, “but for that much money, it should also fold laundry.”

Shadow laughed.

Not politely.

Full knee slap.

That broke the first layer of tension.

Tote arrived next, with a tote hanging from the shoulder of a woman who appeared prepared for a power outage, a weather emergency, and the sudden collapse of municipal services. The bag contained wipes, snacks, tissues, two phone chargers, hand sanitizer, pain reliever, three pens, a packet of crackers, and a small toy that had apparently traveled from her living-room floor without her knowledge.

“What is this doing in here?” she asked, holding it up.

“Paying rent,” Lips said.

Tote shook her head and dropped it back into the bag. She had everything anyone might need except something chosen only for herself.

The Caregiver arrived with her phone in her hand.

Her mother had begun confusing dates, medications, and whether certain conversations had already happened. An aide was staying with her that evening, but the Caregiver had learned that having help did not mean she stopped listening for trouble. She hugged me with one arm and kept the phone in the other.

“Everything is fine,” she said.

Nobody had asked yet.

The Fixer arrived looking for a job.

“Do you need me to set the table?”

“It is already set.”

“Open the wine?”

“Already open.”

“Put the food out?”

“It is out.”

She glanced around the kitchen as though I had hidden a task from her on purpose.

“I can do something.”

“You can sit down.”

She stared at me. I stared back. We both understood that neither one of us had any intention of following that instruction.

The Editor arrived last.

A flawless four-carat block of ice anchored her manicured hand, demanding the attention of everyone in the room. The diamond looked Harry Winston expensive, whether it was or not. She had never encountered a centerpiece, sentence, or person she did not believe could benefit from one small adjustment. She paused beside the table and moved one wineglass half an inch to the left. No one said anything. I moved it back after she walked away.

By seven-thirty, six women had arrived. With me, that made seven around a table set for eight. The eighth woman had texted at 6:40.

So tired. Might just stay in.

Everyone understood that sentence for what it was. It was not necessarily only about being tired. Women say we are tired when the rest of the truth feels too complicated to send in a text.

Tired can mean overwhelmed.

It can mean ashamed that your life is not going as well as people think it is.

It can mean you have spent all week helping other people and cannot bear the thought of walking into another room where someone might ask, “So, how are you?”

Tired can mean you want to come, but you are afraid that the moment somebody is kind to you, you may fall apart in a way you cannot gather neatly before driving home.

Sometimes tired simply means you do not have the bandwidth for people tonight.

Not because you do not love them.

Not because you would not enjoy yourself once you arrived.

Sometimes you already know you would laugh, eat well, and be glad you came, but you are dreading how much recovery the evening will require afterward. Even a small gathering can take more out of you than anyone in the room will ever know.

Nobody typed, Girl, you need to get out of the house.

Nobody told her she would feel better once she arrived.

Nobody began campaigning as though attendance were the final round of an election.

We told her the door was open. She stayed home. Her place remained set.

For the first hour, nobody did anything profound.

That mattered.

The food made its way around the table. The music shifted from old-school R&B to soft jazz and then to one of those playlists that seemed to understand grown women needed Frankie Beverly at some point in the evening, or the gathering was not legally binding. We argued over whether a remake was better than the original.

Lips claimed she could identify any song from the opening three seconds and failed twice in a row. Tote found fruit snacks in the bottom of her bag and passed them around as though we had not just finished dinner. Shadow began to loosen. Her coat remained across her lap, but she stopped holding her purse against her body. The Caregiver placed her phone face-up beside her plate. The Fixer kept scanning the room for work. The Editor turned her ring around her finger whenever she had to stop herself from adjusting something.

And I continued moving.

I refilled glasses that were still half-full. I carried serving dishes into the kitchen, then brought them back when someone asked for seconds. I warmed the rolls even though the rolls had not requested resuscitation.

Every time I passed the table, somebody told me to sit down.

Every time, I said, “In a minute.”

A minute is a generous little lie. It asks nothing of the person telling it and can be extended indefinitely. I would sit after everyone had a plate. Then after the food was put away. Then after the tea was made. Then after the kitchen stopped looking like food had actually been prepared in it. Women like me can turn a countertop into a legal argument against resting.

At the table, Lips asked Tote what she would do with an entire Saturday that belonged only to her.

“Clean the house.”

“That is not yours,” The Fixer said. “That belongs to everybody who lives in it.”

“All right. Grocery shop without anybody asking for cereal.”

“That is still labor,” The Editor said.

Tote laughed, then looked down at her plate.

“I don’t know.”

The answer changed something in her face. Not dramatically. Just enough for the women nearest her to understand that not knowing had frightened her. She loved her children. That was never in question. She loved their stories, their noise, and the small bodies that appeared beside her bed at inappropriate hours with questions that could have waited until sunrise. She did not miss some younger, thinner, more carefree version of herself. She missed the woman who could want something without first calculating how it would affect everybody else. She had not forgotten what she liked. She had forgotten she was allowed to ask.

“I would get a hotel room,” Lips said.

Shadow looked at her.

“You would answer email from the hotel.”

Lips pointed her fork at her.

“You have known me too long.”

“Would you?” I asked.

Lips opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Reached for her glass.

“Why are we asking questions that require reflection?”

Everybody laughed. She did too, but her laugh ended first. People described Lips as polished, accomplished, and focused. She always knew what to say in meetings and could make a correction sound so elegant that the person being corrected almost thanked her. I wondered whether she had become so impressive that she no longer knew whether people loved her or simply respected the performance.

“I sat in my car for twenty minutes before work on Monday,” she said.

No one interrupted.

“I kept telling myself to get out. I knew I was going to be late. I just could not make my hand open the door.”

“What happened?” Shadow asked.

“I went inside.”

“That is not what she asked,” The Fixer said.

Lips looked down at her glass.

“Nothing happened. That was the problem. I went in, did my job, answered everybody’s questions, and nobody knew I had almost cried in the parking lot.”

The table grew quieter.

The Caregiver looked toward her phone, then away from it.

She began talking about her mother in facts. The aide’s schedule. The medication adjustment. The appointment next Tuesday. The insurance company that had kept her on hold for forty-three minutes only to disconnect the call. Facts were easier to manage. They could be placed in order. They did not ask the room to carry anything except information. Then the facts ran out.

“I am tired of being the person everybody calls,” she said.

The room stayed still.

The Caregiver looked embarrassed almost immediately.

“I know that sounds terrible.”

“It sounds tired,” Shadow said.

“It is my mother.”

“We know,” Lips said.

“She took care of me.”

“We know that too.”

“I should not feel like this.”

The Fixer leaned forward before the sentence had fully settled.

“Have you talked to the hospital social worker? There might be respite programs, and depending on her insurance, you may be able to get additional hours. What about another relative? Could someone take one day a week? Or maybe…”

The Caregiver began nodding. Not because the suggestions were helpful. Because receiving advice is often easier than asking people to sit beside a truth they cannot solve.

The Editor reached toward The Fixer.

Mid-sentence, she straightened The Fixer’s collar, then tucked a loose strand of hair behind the ear of the woman beside her. Two small acts of caretaking completed before she had even finished her own thought. Then she caught herself, hand still raised and laughed softly. Some habits do not know they have been given the night off. For the rest of the evening, she kept her hands mostly in her lap, turning her ring around her finger while she listened.

“She does not need us to fix it tonight,” The Editor said.

There was no rebuke in her voice. Only recognition.

“She needs us to hear it.”

The room went quiet for a moment. Then it exhaled. Even The Fixer looked relieved. We reach for solutions because solutions give us something to do. Listening asks more of us. Listening requires us to remain in the room after usefulness has run out. The Caregiver looked down at the roll she had broken into pieces on her plate.

“I hate that sometimes I want it to be over,” she whispered.

No one asked her to explain what it meant. The caregiving. The confusion. The decline. The waiting. The entire long goodbye. Perhaps it meant all of it. No one told her she was a good daughter. She already knew the expectations attached to that title.

Shadow said, “You are allowed to be tired.”

That was all.

No lesson. No correction. No reminder that she should be grateful for the time she still had. The Caregiver nodded and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. Tote reached toward her bag, probably for the tissues. She stopped herself. The Editor noticed and smiled. Tote smiled back. Both women placed their hands in their laps.

For once, care did not require movement. The evening did not suddenly become solemn. That would have been too neat. And, frankly, unbearable. A familiar song came on. Somebody sang the wrong lyrics with full confidence. Lips corrected her and was immediately overruled by the entire table.

The Caregiver looked at the phone beside her plate. The screen was dark. She turned it face-down.

There is a point in certain gatherings when the conversation changes texture. Nobody announces it. The women simply stop speaking in polished summaries and begin telling the story beneath the story.

Tote admitted that she sometimes drove the long way home after grocery shopping just to spend another seven minutes alone.

Lips confessed that she had postponed a vacation because she did not trust her coworkers to manage without her, then resented them for needing her.

Shadow said she had nearly canceled because she was not sure she could bear being around people who might notice she was not fine.

“What did you think we were going to do?” The Fixer asked.

“Ask me what was wrong.”

“We were definitely going to ask.”

“I know.”

“And you came anyway.”

Shadow looked down at the coat still folded across her lap.

“I almost turned around twice.”

Nobody congratulated her for being brave.

Nobody transformed her anxiety into an inspirational speech.

Lips simply tapped the coat with one finger.

“You know you can take that off, right?”

Shadow stared at it as though she had forgotten it was there. Then she laughed, lifted the coat from her lap, and placed it over the back of her chair.

The Fixer admitted she had stopped calling one of her friends because every conversation ended with another crisis to manage.

“I feel terrible about it,” she said. “But I do not know how to care about somebody and not immediately start building a plan.”

The Editor looked at her ring.

“I think if I can keep everything looking right, nothing can go too wrong.”

No one laughed.

“I know I get on people’s nerves,” she continued. “I just do not know how to relax when something feels out of place.”

Tote glanced at the perfectly aligned place setting in front of her. Then she moved her fork slightly to the right. The Editor watched her do it. Her mouth twitched. She left it there.

I glanced once at the untouched place setting.

One woman had stayed home because she did not have the energy for the room. Six others had come carrying different versions of the same exhaustion. Around that table, every woman had learned a different way to earn her place.

Shadow made herself smaller.

Lips performed competence.

Tote anticipated everybody’s needs.

The Caregiver remained permanently available.

The Fixer produced answers.

The Editor corrected anything that threatened to become disorderly.

And I stood in the kitchen making sure the tea did not feel neglected.

I had built a career around helping women see themselves more clearly. I could recognize the woman who had confused productivity with worth. I could name the survival pattern. I could create the journal prompt, the coaching exercise, the safe conversation, the room.

I was fluent in making space for women. I was still learning not to stand outside that space once the door opened. I wiped an already-clean section of the counter. Then I wiped it again. The realization irritated me before it moved me. Because I knew better.

We had chosen the night together. The gathering belonged to all of us. I had merely offered the house. But somewhere along the way, I had decided the room was mine to hold.

If somebody’s glass was empty, I noticed.

If the music became too quiet, I noticed.

If a serving dish needed to move three inches to the left for absolutely no reason, I noticed.

What I had not noticed was that everybody else had been sitting for hours while I kept proving I deserved to be there. There is always one more thing women like me can do before we rest.

One more email.

One more dish.

One more project.

One more person to settle.

The work does not have to be necessary. It only has to be available. Usefulness can become a hiding place. If people need you, you know where to stand. You know what to offer. You know why you belong.

But who are you when nobody requires anything from you?

Who are you when no one needs organizing, advising, soothing, anticipating, rescuing, refilling, or reminding? Who are you when somebody looks at you and says, “Nothing is required. You can sit”?

Shadow noticed me first.

“You know you have not sat down, right?”

“I sat earlier.”

“When?”

I thought about it.

“Before everybody came.”

“That does not count.”

“I’m about to make more tea.”

“The kettle is full,” Lips said.

“I need to clear these plates.”

Tote looked around the table.

“We are still using them.”

“I’m fine standing.”

“We know,” The Fixer said. “That is the problem.”

A few women laughed.

So did I.

I folded the dish towel once. Then again. Shadow pulled out the chair beside her. I sat. Nothing dramatic happened. The ceiling did not open. The music did not swell. Nobody applauded because a grown woman had finally stopped supervising a room that was doing perfectly well without her.

The Editor picked up the robin’s-egg-blue teacup with the gold trim. For a moment, I thought she was going to adjust its position on the table. Instead, she poured tea into it and slid it toward me. Steam rose between us. Up close, I could see that the gold rim had worn thin in one spot. Near the handle was a small imperfection, not quite a crack, more like evidence that the cup had survived being used.

It was an heirloom from someone’s forgotten ancestor. That was all anyone had said about it.

I imagined other women holding it before me. A tired mother, a serene grandmother drinking tea before the house awakened. An aunt bringing it out for company. A woman sitting at a kitchen table long before any of us were born, wrapping her fingers around the same handle while deciding what she could survive next. The cup had not remained beautiful because it had been protected from use. It had remained beautiful because it had been held.

I wrapped both hands around it. Nobody asked me to speak. That may have been the kindest part. They did not turn toward me expectantly because I had finally sat down. They did not ask what breakthrough I was having. They did not require the host to become the lesson. I was allowed to be in the room without performing the room.

For several minutes, I listened. Then I said something true. Not my deepest secret. Not a grand confession worthy of a soundtrack. Just a truth I had been swallowing because I thought I should be beyond it by now.

“I am tired of feeling like I have to earn the life I keep trying to build.”

The words sat there. Nobody flinched. Nobody listed my accomplishments as evidence against my exhaustion. Nobody reminded me how far I had come, as though distance traveled makes a woman less tired.

Lips nodded.

Shadow said, “That makes sense.”

Three ordinary words.

That makes sense.

Not because they solved anything. Because they told me my feelings did not disqualify me from belonging in the room.

By midnight, the lives waiting outside that house had not changed.

The Caregiver’s mother still needed her.

Tote still had children who would wake early and ask where she had been as though she had crossed an ocean instead of spending a few hours across town.

Lips would still walk into work carrying expectations nobody had bothered to lighten.

Shadow would still have to decide what to say when somebody asked whether she was okay.

The Fixer would still feel an answer rising in her throat whenever pain entered a room.

The Editor would still notice everything out of place.

The bills remained. The appointments remained. The diagnoses, deadlines, family tensions, unanswered messages, and private disappointments remained. No one had been repaired. That was never the point. The evening changed something smaller. Perhaps something more useful.

The Caregiver left knowing her resentment did not erase her love.

Tote made a plan to take herself to breakfast the following Saturday and not bring food home for anybody.

Lips wiped off her lipstick before leaving and laughed when Shadow told her she looked exactly the same.

The Fixer apologized for offering solutions too quickly.

The Caregiver hugged her.

“You were trying to help.”

“I know.”

“That does not mean I needed it.”

“I know that now too.”

Tote produced three containers from somewhere inside her bag because of course she did. The small toy reappeared, and she held it up like evidence of a crime. Women wrapped leftovers, searched for lids that had never matched anything, and stood near the doorway continuing conversations they had already said goodbye to twice.

Shadow was the last one to retrieve her coat.

When the house grew quiet, I returned to the dining room. Seven chairs had been used. One had not. The empty chair remained at the table, waiting beside the untouched place setting. The woman who had been too tired to come still had not come. I did not resent her. I understood her.

Sometimes the door can be open and we still cannot make ourselves walk through it.

Sometimes rest arrives before we are ready to trust it.

Sometimes a woman knows she would be loved inside the room and still does not have enough of herself available to enter it.

Sometimes she has survived so much by keeping herself together that being received feels more frightening than being needed.

The evening does not change her life. It changes how alone she feels inside it. I left the chair where it was.

I no longer believed that chair belonged only to the woman who declined the invitation. I think it belongs to the woman reading this after everybody else in her house has gone to sleep.

The woman sitting in her car because the car is the only place nobody is asking her for anything.

The woman hiding in the bathroom for ten minutes of quiet.

The woman who loves her friends but does not always have enough of herself left to be with them.

The woman already calculating how long she will need to recover from an evening she has not attended yet.

The woman who keeps telling herself she will rest after the next deadline, the next appointment, the next crisis, the next person is settled.

It belongs to the woman who has confused being needed with being loved.

The woman who knows exactly who she is when somebody requires something from her and feels unsteady when nobody does.

The woman who creates safety for everybody else and quietly assumes she must remain standing.

I know her well. I am still learning how not to be her.

Women do not always need to be repaired.

Sometimes we need to be received.

Sometimes rest is not silence, solitude, or a weekend away.

Sometimes rest is sitting among women who do not need anything from you.

Women who do not ask you to prove your strength before they believe your exhaustion.

Women who can hear an ugly truth without trying to polish it into something easier to hold.

Women who pour the tea and slide it toward you before you have the chance to say you can get it yourself.

The chair is still there.

Nobody is going to ask why you are late. Nobody needs the full explanation for why you almost did not come.

You do not have to bring anything.

You do not have to be interesting.

You do not have to be inspiring.

You do not have to hold the room together.

Just come sit.

Somebody will pour.

Reflection Questions

Where have you become so accustomed to being needed that you no longer know how to let yourself be received?
Can you name a time someone cared for you and you let them, without immediately finding a way to repay it?

If you sat down at your own table tonight, there is no one to serve, nothing to fix…what’s the first true thing you’d say out loud?

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You’re Not Behind. You’re Overloaded.

Pennie Stewart — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 06:24:51 GMT

There is a particular kind of shame that comes from looking at your life and thinking: I should be further than this by now. I should have more saved. I should be more consistent. I should have launched the thing already. I should be healed by now.

That word should can become a whole prison if you let it. It has you measuring your life against people whose full story you do not know, whose support system you cannot see, whose family money never makes it into the caption. And after all that comparing, you turn around and call yourself behind.

But what if you are not behind? What if you are overloaded? What if the problem is not that you lack ambition, discipline, or drive, but that you are carrying too much inside a world that keeps pretending the load is normal? That distinction matters. Being behind means you had the time, clarity, resources, support, and capacity, and chose not to move. Being overloaded means too many demands are competing for the same limited energy.

Behind says, I failed. Overloaded says, something about this load needs to be examined. Behind produces shame. Overloaded asks for strategy. And too many of us are shaming ourselves for what we should actually be investigating.

The lie of laziness has history

Let’s tell the truth without turning this into a history class. Some of this “you’re lazy” language is old. Very old. Black people in this country know something about being worked, watched, used, underpaid, dismissed, and then insulted for being tired. There is a particular cruelty in extracting labor from a people for centuries, then calling them lazy the moment they demand wages, rest, and choice.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture points out that contradiction directly: enslaved people were stereotyped as lazy while being forced under violence to work from sunrise to sunset. The stereotype was never about work ethic. It was a tool of control. That kind of biology-as-racism may be widely discredited now, but the emotional residue did not evaporate. Systems have memory. Workplaces have memory. Families have memory. Bodies have memory. This kind of conditioning does not disappear just because the laws change. Stereotypes do not have to be spoken out loud to shape who gets doubted, who gets watched, who gets overworked, and who gets told they are not doing enough.

So when I say you are not behind, you are overloaded, I am not just talking about your calendar. I am talking about the long shadow of expectation, the inherited fear of being seen as lazy, the way some of us still feel guilty resting because somewhere deep down, rest feels like evidence that we are not doing enough. That did not come from nowhere.

Overload does not always look like collapse

This is the part most people miss. Overload does not always look like crying on the floor. It does not always look like quitting the job or staying in bed for three days.

Sometimes overload looks like answering emails, cooking the food, showing up to work, posting the content, being pleasant enough that nobody suspects how close you are to the edge. Sometimes it looks like sitting in the car after work for twenty minutes because you cannot convince your body to go inside yet. Not because you hate your home. Because the transition from one set of demands to another feels like crossing a bridge with no guardrails.

That is why people miss it. They think because you are still moving, you are okay. But movement is not the same as wellness. Some people are not thriving. They are operating.

You are not lazy. You are mentally crowded. You are not undisciplined. You are depleted. You are not behind. You are buried under invisible labor.

The forty-seven-tabs person

You are at the kitchen sink, washing the same dish you started washing twenty minutes ago. You are thinking about the dental bill from August you never opened. About the email your sister sent that you have been meaning to answer thoughtfully for three weeks. About whether your mama took her medication today. About the project you said you would start last month. About the dryer that keeps running.

By the time you put the dish down, you are tired. You have not done anything. But you are tired.

That is not laziness. That is a brain trying to run a household, a career, a healing journey, a financial plan, a family system, and a private panic on the same operating system, all day, every day. When you finally sit down to focus, nothing happens. Not because you are weak. Because there is no bandwidth left.

I know this because I have had seasons where I completed one thing and immediately shamed myself for the three things still waiting on me. I could upload the book, fix the website, handle the appointment, answer the message, and still go to bed thinking about what I did not finish. That is not ambition. That is a moving goalpost with my name on it.

And sometimes my body knew I was overloaded before I was ready to admit it. The headache. The tight jaw. The heavy legs. The exhaustion that did not match the task. By the time I opened the laptop, I had already spent half my energy managing the invisible list. My body was telling the truth before my pride was ready to.

The workplace version

At work, overload often gets disguised as being trusted. You are reliable, so they rely on you more. You are calm, so they bring you chaos. You are competent, so they assume you can absorb what other people drop.

In any workplace, being dependable can become an unspoken invitation for people to keep adding weight to your plate. But when identity enters the room, the load gets heavier. But for Black women, there is often another layer. You are professional, so they test how much disrespect you can metabolize without reacting.

And if you are a Black woman in a room that already watches you closely, you are not just doing the job. You are managing how your tone lands. How your face reads. How your directness gets interpreted. How your exhaustion stays hidden. How your confidence reads to someone whose bias you have to translate around in real time.

That is labor too. It does not show up on a job description, performance review, or paycheck. It just lives in your body.

By Friday, you are tired from the work and tired from the restraint. Tired from translating yourself into language other people can swallow. Tired from being excellent and having to make your excellence easy for the room. That is not being behind. That is being overextended in a system that keeps benefiting from your composure.

The family version

Some of us are overloaded because we are the family’s unofficial infrastructure. You are the one they call. The one who remembers the appointment. The one who has the extra twenty dollars. The one who can explain the paperwork. The one who will figure it out.

Your phone buzzes on a Saturday morning. It is your cousin. You already know. Before you even open the message, you are doing math on what kind of energy this is going to cost you, and you have not had coffee yet. You answer anyway. Because guilt arrives before the boundary does.

People stop seeing the labor. They do not see that every request becomes another tab open in your mind, that being dependable does not mean you are unlimited, that your life also requires maintenance. You may not be behind on your own goals. You may just be carrying a family system on your back and calling it normal.

The body keeps the receipts

Overload lives in the body too. Tight shoulders. Poor sleep. A jaw you cannot remember unclenching. Headaches that show up at 3 p.m. without an invitation. A body that feels like it is always bracing for something. Then we shame ourselves for not being more disciplined, more fit, more focused, more energetic. But what if your body is not being difficult? What if it is telling the truth? What if your exhaustion is not a moral failure, but data?

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, teaches that rest is resistance and a necessary interruption to systems that profit from exhaustion. Her work reminds us that rest is not laziness. It is a reclamation of the body, the spirit, and the right to exist beyond production.

Some of us were taught to treat the body like equipment. Use it. Push it. Ignore it. Correct it. Shrink it. Decorate it. Rarely listen to it.

A wiser life asks a different question: what is my body trying to tell me before it has to scream?

Accountability is not shame

Let’s be grown about this. Being overloaded does not mean you are helpless. It does not mean every delay is someone else’s fault. It does not mean you get to abandon your goals because life is hard. Accountability still matters. But accountability and shame are not the same thing.

Accountability asks what is true, what needs to change, what support you need, what your next honest step is. Shame asks what is wrong with you, why you are like this, why you can’t get it together.

Accountability gives you a plan. Shame gives you a personality crisis. Accountability says, let’s adjust the load. Shame says, you are the load.

You do not need more shame. You need a more honest assessment of what you are carrying.

Do a load audit before you call yourself lazy

Before you decide you are failing, ask yourself what you are carrying that no one sees, and what you are carrying that does not even belong to you.

· What am I carrying mentally?

· What am I carrying emotionally?

· What am I carrying financially?

· What am I carrying for my family?

· What am I carrying from my past?

· What am I carrying because I do not want to disappoint anyone?

· What am I carrying because I am afraid to say no?

· What am I carrying that no one sees?

· What am I carrying that does not even belong to me?

That last one may change your life. Because some of what you call responsibility may be inherited obligation. Some of what you call ambition may be fear of being dismissed. Some of what you call discipline may be self-punishment. Some of what you call loyalty may be self-abandonment. And some of what you call being behind may just be the result of carrying too much for too long without enough support.

What to do when you are overloaded

You do not fix overload by adding more pressure. You do not heal exhaustion by insulting yourself into productivity. You start by telling the truth.

Name the load. Specifically. Not “I am stressed.” Money is heavy. Grief is heavy. Caregiving is heavy. The unfinished dream is heavy. The comparison habit is heavy. The lack of support is heavy. Specificity gives you power.

Separate what is urgent from what is important. Everything screaming for your attention is not sacred. Some things are loud because they are disorganized. Some things feel urgent because someone else failed to plan.

Choose a season. Not everything can be your focus at once. Maybe this is a money season. A healing season. A rest and repair season. Choosing a season does not mean the other things do not matter. It means you stop pretending one nervous system can carry ten life overhauls at the same time.

Reduce the noise. You cannot listen to every podcast, follow every expert, try every strategy, chase every trend, and still hear yourself clearly.

Take one honest next step. Not the perfect step. Not the impressive step. The honest one. Open the bill. Make the appointment. Cancel the thing. Drink the water. Take the nap. One honest step is not everything. But when you are overloaded, it is not nothing.

You are allowed to rest before you collapse

One of the most damaging lessons many of us inherited is that rest has to be earned by collapse. You can rest when you finish. When the house is clean. When the money is right. When you have proven you are not lazy.

No. You are allowed to rest because you are human. Because your body is not equipment. Because depletion is not a badge of honor. Because your ancestors did not survive what they survived so you could turn exhaustion into identity.

Rest is not quitting. Rest is maintenance. Rest is repair. Rest is how you stop confusing urgency with purpose.

You are not failing because you cannot carry everything

Let this land. You are exhausted because you keep trying to carry it all. You are not weak because the load is heavy…you are honest when you admit that it is. You are not lazy because your body wants rest…you are alive because your body is asking to be cared for.

So maybe the next version of your life does not begin with pushing harder. Maybe it begins with telling the truth about the load. Asking what you can put down. What can wait. What needs help. What needs grace. What needs to stop being called failure.

Because you do not build a freer life by shaming yourself into motion. You build it by telling the truth, choosing your next step, and refusing to keep measuring your worth by how much exhaustion you can survive.

You are not behind. You are overloaded. And now that you know the difference, you can stop punishing yourself long enough to make a better plan.

For reflection

What is one thing on your list right now that may not even be yours to carry?

Have you been calling yourself behind when the truth is, you may be overloaded?

Send this to the person who keeps calling themselves lazy when what they really need is rest, support, and a better plan.

If this met you where you are, subscribe to Premier Perspective. This is where we name the patterns we were taught to call laziness, weakness, or failure, and tell the deeper truth underneath them. Come sit with us. You are not behind. You may just need better language for the load.

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AI Transparency Note

I believe in being transparent about the creative tools I use. AI may assist with brainstorming, research, editing, proofreading, and occasionally the creation of artwork that accompanies my writing. The stories, lived experiences, perspectives, and final editorial decisions are, and always will be, my own.

The Monthly Pause | July 2026 | Issue 02

Pennie Stewart — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 14:02:13 GMT

Hey, good people.

Life moves fast.
This little corner of the internet is my reminder…and hopefully yours…that growth deserves to be noticed, joy deserves to be celebrated, and reflection is never time wasted.
Thank you for pressing pause with me.

July taught me that growth doesn’t always announce itself.

Sometimes it’s walking a little farther than you thought your legs would allow. Sometimes it’s catching progress you couldn’t even see a few weeks ago. Sometimes it’s crossing a goal off the list without fanfare, rebuilding your confidence one unglamorous win at a time…or just showing up again, even when life is doing its best impression of a reason to quit.

I’m learning to actually sit with those moments instead of sprinting past them toward whatever’s next. Turns out the “next milestone” isn’t going anywhere. It can wait a beat.

July has been a month of quiet wins. Some were easy to recognize, while others only became clear when I stopped long enough to appreciate them. Those moments reminded me that progress isn't always loud.

This month also had me thinking about something a lot of writers have been wrestling with, some out loud and some under their breath: where AI fits into the creative process.

Transparency matters to me. Always has.

Earlier this week I read an article about how Substack introduced a feature that identifies writing it believes may have been created with AI. The rollout has sparked a lot of conversation among writers about creativity, transparency, and what responsible AI use should look like.

Rather than speculate or debate the tool itself, I’d rather tell you where I stand.

Going forward, you’ll see a brief AI Transparency Note at the end of my essays. I use AI as a brainstorming partner, research assistant, and editor—not as my voice. My stories, experiences, opinions, and final editorial decisions are, and will always be, my own.

Now, let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on July together.

Can we collectively stop acting like progress only counts when it's dramatic? Everyone loves the finish line, but nobody wants to talk about the tiny, unglamorous steps it takes to get there. Some of us spend so much time waiting for the perfect moment that we miss the power of simply continuing.

Momentum isn't flashy. It's choosing to keep going when the excitement has worn off. It's showing up before you feel ready, celebrating progress before it's perfect, and refusing to let one bad day convince you you've failed. You don't need a viral moment, a solid plan, or a standing ovation to know you're moving forward. Sometimes momentum looks like sending the email, taking the walk, writing one paragraph, or simply getting back up after life knocked you flat.

Stop waiting for motivation to show up. She’s inconsistent.

Build momentum instead.

Order Discernment Under Pressure

Celebrating the Wins We Almost Missed

Have you ever hustled so hard toward a goal that you completely missed the part where you were already winning?

Yeah. Guilty. More times than I’m willing to count out loud.

We get so locked in on the finish line that we blow right past everything happening on the way there. We tell ourselves, “I’ll celebrate when...” When I lose more weight. When I finish the book. When I hit the next milestone. When life finally looks as put-together on the outside as I’m pretending it is.

Except life doesn’t RSVP to that plan. It never has.

This month reminded me that progress rarely shows up with a marching band. It shows up sneaky.

It looked like walking farther without my body staging a protest. A number on the scale that finally caught up to weeks of effort it clearly didn’t want to acknowledge. A dress fitting different in a way that had nothing to do with the dress. A website that finally feels like mine instead of something I’m just renting. A community here on Substack that keeps showing up, which...hi, thank you, I see you.

None of it came with confetti or a standing ovation. But every bit of it was whispering the same thing on repeat:

Keep going. It’s working.

Here’s what I’ve figured out: waiting around for one big cinematic breakthrough moment is a great way to miss every single win that got you there. I was so busy scanning the horizon for fireworks that I almost stepped right over my own progress.

So this month, I’ve decided to stop acting like small wins don’t count just because they aren’t dramatic. I’m giving myself full, unapologetic permission to celebrate the small stuff anyway.

Not because the journey’s over...it’s very much not.

But because every little win is proof I’m not standing where I used to be. And honestly? That deserves more than a shrug and a “yeah, but.”

Maybe your biggest win this month isn’t what you accomplished. Maybe it’s finally noticing that you’ve been making progress all along. Celebrate where you are. Then keep going.

Order WYR Black Girl Joy Edition

The newly revised Premier Potential Coaching Solutions website is now live! While I'm still making improvements and adding resources, it finally feels like a home that reflects where the business is headed. Over the coming weeks I'll continue refining pages, expanding resources, and making it easier to explore everything PPCS has to offer.

Check out my renovation efforts

This community’s grown to 120…and “grateful” doesn’t even cover it. But instead of just saying thanks, I want to show you why.

Kyra Faison-Gardner left this comment, and it’s stuck with me since:

Kyra Faison-Gardner: “Thank you for these hard truths delivered with softness.”

Read Soft Life is not a Candle

Hard truths delivered with softness. If I ever need a mission statement for this whole Substack, that might be it.

Then there’s Grits & Gab, who said it better than I did:

Grits & Gab: “Well said, Sis!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 We are definitely not the problem. We’re the solution. People always want us to save the day.”

Read BW are not America's Problem

We’re not the problem. We’re the solution. Full stop.

And She’s Facing Freedom Weekly caught something I almost glossed over myself:

She’s Facing Freedom Weekly: on the line about nerves wearing down to exposed wire, and the point about fuller bodies being expected to be grateful…

All the Pretty Girls Scream

“Some lines hit me hard and some lines made me laugh.” Honestly? Same. That’s the whole job.

Every comment, every message, every shared story reminds me that these essays aren’t just being read. They’re being lived. It confirms to me that healing rarely happens in isolation. Sometimes all it takes is realizing someone else has walked a similar road.

I may write the essays. But y’all keep turning them into evidence.

Keep growing. Keep reflecting. And keep believing your story is still unfolding. Thank you for reminding me that I’m not writing into the void.

Until next month's pause...

Stop moving the finish line.

You’ve come farther than you’re giving yourself credit for. Go celebrate something that doesn’t look worthy of celebrating.

Odds are, it is.

I’ll meet you back here next month.

~ Pennie, XO

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You're Not Behind. You're Overloaded.

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:03:00 GMT

There is a particular kind of shame that comes from looking at your life and thinking:

I should be further than this by now.

I should have more saved.

I should be more consistent.

I should have launched the thing already.

I should be healed by now.

I should be healthier, softer, happier, more disciplined, more something.

That word should can become a whole prison if you let it.

It has you measuring your life against people whose full story you do not know, whose support system you cannot see, whose family money never makes it into the caption. And after all that comparing, you turn around and call yourself behind.

But what if you are not behind? What if you are overloaded?

What if the problem is not that you lack ambition, discipline, or drive? What if the problem is that you are carrying too much inside a world that keeps pretending the load is normal?

That distinction matters.

Being behind means you had the time, clarity, resources, support, and capacity, and chose not to move. Being overloaded means too many demands are competing for the same limited energy.

Behind says, I failed. Overloaded says, Something about this load needs to be examined.

Behind produces shame. Overloaded asks for strategy.

And too many of us are shaming ourselves for what we should actually be investigating.

The lie of laziness has history

Let’s tell the truth without turning this into a history class.

Some of this “you’re lazy” language is old. Very old.

Black people in this country know something about being worked, watched, used, underpaid, dismissed, and then insulted for being tired. There is a particular cruelty in extracting labor from a people for centuries, then calling them lazy the moment they demand wages, rest, and choice.

That kind of biology-as-racism may be widely discredited now, but the emotional residue did not evaporate.

Systems have memory. Workplaces have memory. Families have memory. Bodies have memory.

This kind of conditioning does not disappear just because the laws change. Stereotypes do not have to be spoken out loud to shape who gets doubted, who gets watched, who gets overworked, and who gets told they are not doing enough.

So when I say you are not behind, you are overloaded, I am not just talking about your calendar.

I am talking about the long shadow of expectation, the inherited fear of being seen as lazy, the way some of us still feel guilty resting because somewhere deep down, rest feels like evidence that we are not doing enough.

That did not come from nowhere.

Overload does not always look like collapse

This is the part most people miss.

Overload does not always look like crying on the floor. It does not always look like quitting the job or staying in bed for three days.

Sometimes overload looks like answering emails, cooking the food, showing up to work, posting the content, being pleasant enough that nobody suspects how close you are to the edge.

Sometimes overload looks like sitting in the car after work for twenty minutes because you cannot convince your body to go inside yet. Not because you hate your home, not because you are dramatic. Because the transition from one set of demands to another feels like crossing a bridge with no guardrails.

That is why people miss it. They think because you are still moving, you are okay.

But movement is not the same as wellness.

Some people are not thriving. They are operating.

You are not lazy. You are mentally crowded.

You are not undisciplined. You are depleted.

You are not behind. You are buried under invisible labor.

The forty-seven-tabs person

You are at the kitchen sink, washing the same dish you started washing twenty minutes ago.

You are thinking about the dental bill from August you never opened, the email your sister sent that you have been meaning to answer thoughtfully for three weeks, whether your mama took her medication today, the project you said you would start last month, the dryer that keeps running.

By the time you put the dish down, you are tired. You have not done anything, but you are tired.

That is not laziness.

That is a brain trying to run a household, a career, a healing journey, a financial plan, a family system, and a private panic on the same operating system, all day, every day.

When you finally sit down to focus, nothing happens. Not because you are weak. Because there is no bandwidth left.

And sometimes my body knew I was overloaded before I was ready to admit it. The headache. The tight jaw. The heavy legs. The exhaustion that did not match the task. I would sit down to do one simple thing and suddenly remember fifteen other things that needed me: the bill, the email, the appointment, the idea I never finished, the body that needed care, the dream that still wanted attention.

By the time I opened the laptop, I had already spent half my energy managing the invisible list. My body was telling the truth before my pride was ready to.

The workplace version

In any workplace, overload can hide behind the compliment of being dependable. You are reliable, so they rely on you more. You are calm, so they bring you chaos. You are competent, so they assume you can absorb what other people drop.

But for Black women, there is often another layer.

You are professional, so they test how much disrespect you can metabolize without reacting.

And if you are a Black woman in a room that already watches you closely, you are not just doing the job. You are managing how your tone lands, how your face reads, how your directness gets interpreted, how your exhaustion stays hidden, how your confidence reads to someone whose bias you have to translate around in real time.

That is labor too, and it does not show up on a job description, performance review, or paycheck. It just lives in your body.

That is not being behind.

That is being overextended in a system that keeps benefiting from your composure.

The family version

Some of us are overloaded because we are the family’s unofficial infrastructure.

You are the one they call. The one who remembers the appointment. The one who has the extra twenty dollars. The one who can explain the paperwork. The one who will figure it out.

Your phone buzzes on a Saturday morning. It is your cousin. You already know.

Before you even open the message, you are doing math on what kind of energy this is going to cost you, and you have not had coffee yet.

You answer anyway. Because guilt arrives before the boundary does.

You may not be behind on your own goals. You may just be carrying a family system on your back and calling it normal.

The body keeps the receipts

Overload lives in the body too.

Tight shoulders. Poor sleep. A jaw you cannot remember unclenching. Headaches that show up at 3 p.m. without an invitation. A body that feels like it is always bracing for something.

Then we shame ourselves for not being more disciplined, more fit, more focused, more energetic.

But what if your body is not being difficult? What if your body is telling the truth? What if your exhaustion is not a moral failure, but data?

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, teaches that rest is resistance and a necessary interruption of systems that profit from exhaustion. Her work reminds us that rest is not laziness, it is a reclamation of the body, the spirit, and the right to exist beyond production.

Some of us were taught to treat the body like equipment. Use it. Push it. Ignore it. Correct it. Shrink it. Decorate it. But rarely listen to it.

A wiser life asks a different question: what is my body trying to tell me before it has to scream?

Accountability is not shame

Let’s be grown about this.

Being overloaded does not mean you are helpless. It does not mean every delay is someone else’s fault. It does not mean you get to abandon your goals because life is hard.

Accountability still matters. But accountability and shame are not the same thing.

Accountability asks: what is true? What needs to change? What support do I need? What is my next honest step?

Shame asks: what is wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why can’t I get it together?

Accountability gives you a plan. Shame gives you a personality crisis.

Accountability says, Let’s adjust the load. Shame says, You are the load.

You do not need more shame. You need a more honest assessment of what you are carrying.

Do a load audit before you call yourself lazy

Before you decide you are failing, ask yourself this:

What am I carrying mentally? What am I carrying emotionally? What am I carrying financially? What am I carrying for my family? What am I carrying from my past?

What am I carrying because I do not want to disappoint anyone? Because I am afraid to say no? What am I carrying that no one sees? What am I carrying that does not even belong to me?

That last one may change your life.

Because some of what you call responsibility may be inherited obligation. Some of what you call ambition may be fear of being dismissed. Some of what you call discipline may be self-punishment. Some of what you call loyalty may be self-abandonment.

And some of what you call being behind may just be the result of carrying too much for too long without enough support.

What to do when you are overloaded

You do not fix overload by adding more pressure. You do not heal exhaustion by insulting yourself into productivity.

You start by telling the truth.

Name the load. Specifically. Not “I am stressed.” Money is heavy. Grief is heavy. Caregiving is heavy. The unfinished dream is heavy. The comparison habit is heavy. The lack of support is heavy.

Specificity gives you power.

Choose a season. Not everything can be your focus at once. Maybe this is a money season, a healing season, a rest and repair season. Choosing a season does not mean the other things do not matter. It means you stop pretending one nervous system can carry ten life overhauls at the same time.

Reduce the noise. You cannot listen to every podcast, follow every expert, try every strategy, chase every trend, and still hear yourself clearly.

Take one honest next step. Not the perfect step, not the impressive step. The honest one. Open the bill. Make the appointment. Cancel the thing. Drink the water. Take the nap.

One honest step is not everything. But when you are overloaded, it is not nothing.

You are allowed to rest before you collapse

One of the most damaging lessons many of us inherited is that rest has to be earned by collapse.

You can rest when you finish. When the house is clean. When the money is right. When you have proven you are not lazy.

No.

You are allowed to rest because you are human. Because your body is not equipment. Because depletion is not a badge of honor. Because your ancestors did not survive what they survived so you could turn exhaustion into identity.

Rest is not quitting. Rest is maintenance. Rest is repair. Rest is how you stop confusing urgency with purpose.

You are not failing because you cannot carry everything

Let this land.

You are not failing because you cannot carry everything. You are exhausted because you keep trying to.

You are not weak because the load is heavy. You are honest when you admit that it is.

You are not lazy because your body wants rest. You are alive because your body is asking to be cared for.

So maybe the next version of your life does not begin with pushing harder. Maybe it begins with telling the truth about the load.

Asking what you can put down. What can wait. What needs help. What needs grace. What needs to stop being called failure.

You are not behind. You are overloaded.

And now that you know the difference, you can stop punishing yourself long enough to make a better plan.

Send this to the person who keeps calling themselves lazy when what they really need is rest, support, and a better plan.

If this met you where you are, subscribe to Premier Perspective. This is where we name the patterns we were taught to call laziness, weakness, or failure, and tell the deeper truth underneath them. Come sit with us. You are not behind. You may just need better language for the load.

💌 Pennie’s writing is free (for now), but worth something? If today’s message stirred something in you, consider pledging support — no payment now, just love for what’s possible.

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Soft Life Is Not a Candle. It's a Boundary.

Pennie Stewart — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:57:48 GMT

Soft life has been sold to us as a mood.

A robe. A candle. A mimosa. A vacation photo. A clean kitchen with sunlight hitting the counter just right. A neutral-toned bedroom where nothing clashes, nothing is out of place, and apparently nobody has ever thrown yesterday’s clothes over the back of a chair. A slow morning with tea. A luxury bag sitting casually in the passenger seat like the bills did not ask any questions before it got there.

And listen, I am not mad at any of it. I like beautiful things.

I believe comfort matters. A good candle can shift the atmosphere. A soft robe after a long day can remind your body that everything does not have to feel rough. A quiet morning can feel like medicine. Brunch with the right people can become the exhale you did not know you were holding.

Light the candle. Run the bath. Play the music. Buy the robe. Put eucalyptus in the shower if that is your ministry.

But let’s tell the truth.

A candle cannot protect your peace if your phone is still open to everybody’s emergency. A robe cannot soften a life where you keep saying yes while everything inside you is begging for no. A vacation cannot heal a routine that demands you abandon yourself whenever somebody else needs something. A beautiful room cannot settle a mind that is always bracing for the next request, deadline, crisis, interruption, or emotional dump.

Aesthetic peace is not the same as actual peace. Looking soft is not the same as living soft.

Sometimes what we call a soft life is really just survival with better lighting.

I know because I have always struggled with simply doing nothing. At work, there was another task waiting. At home, there was something to clean, organize, finish, or plan. Even a beautiful sunny day could feel accusatory... if I stayed inside reading a book or playing my favorite computer game, someone would inevitably make it seem as though I had wasted the day.

Look at all that sunshine, and you are sitting in the house.

As though sunlight arrived with an assignment.

I once heard a woman say she loved rainy days because they demanded nothing from her. I cannot remember whether Diane Sawyer said it, whether she was interviewing someone who said it, or whether Oprah was somehow part of the conversation. I only remember how deeply the thought landed.

Rain gave her permission to stay inside. There was no expectation to go somewhere, accomplish something, or make proper use of the weather. The gray sky excused her from performing the day correctly.

I understood that immediately.

There were times I wished for rain, not because I disliked the sun, but because I needed something outside myself to release me from the guilt of resting. I needed the weather to say, “You have done enough,” because I had not learned how to say it to myself.

That is not freedom.

Rest should not require an alibi.

For years, I knew how to create a peaceful moment without knowing how to create a peaceful life.

I could make the room comfortable. Put something good on television. Find the right playlist. Get situated with something to drink. Finally convince myself that I was going to sit down and enjoy myself.

Then my mind would begin reciting everything I had not finished, answered, scheduled, cleaned, written, paid, solved, or worried about yet. The candle might still be burning, but I was no longer resting. My body remained in the room... my attention had already left.

That is when comfort becomes recovery instead of a way of living.

You are not living soft.

You are recovering in shifts.

There is a difference.

A softer life is not one without responsibility. It is one where responsibility no longer requires constant self-betrayal. It does not mean you stop working, or that you stop caring, or that you float through adulthood untouched by bills, grief, ambition, family, deadlines, difficult decisions, or the occasional foolishness that makes you question how some people manage to function unsupervised.

Softness is not the absence of real life. It is refusing to build your entire existence on top of your own exhaustion, recognizing that rest cannot remain the emergency service you call after everything has already caught fire, and creating limits before resentment becomes your primary language. It is understanding that peace needs protection.

And protection requires boundaries.

The People Who Love You Can Still Wear You Out

Family is often where the idea of boundaries becomes complicated.

You can tell somebody no at work and call it capacity. Tell a relative no, and suddenly there is a family meeting about how much you have changed.

Family can make access feel like love.

If you answer every call, show up for every crisis, lend what you cannot spare, listen to every complaint, smooth over every conflict, and remain available regardless of how you feel, you are loving.

The moment you hesitate, you are selfish.

At least, that is how the story sometimes gets told. Many women are assigned a role in their families long before they realize they are allowed to decline it.

The dependable one.

The reasonable one.

The strong one.

The one who has a little money.

The one with the car.

The one who can explain things.

The one who will make the call, complete the form, give the ride, calm everybody down, or figure out what nobody else bothered to address until it became an emergency.

You become so good at being useful that usefulness begins to look like your personality.

Being single and child-free created its own set of assumptions for me. My money was mine, so surely I would not miss a few dollars here and there. I had no children waiting for me, so naturally I was available to watch somebody else’s, and I had my own car, my own home, and some control over my schedule, which somehow made my time look less valuable than the time of people with partners or children.

My life appeared flexible from the outside, so people treated it as movable.

Of course Pennie can do it. What else could she possibly have planned?

When I said no, the answer rarely stood on its own. I had to defend it as though presenting a dissertation.

Why could I not help? What was I doing instead? Could I rearrange it? Was I sure?

Eventually, yes became easier. I could agree, avoid the interrogation, and beat myself up later if I had a miserable time.

The complicated truth is that I often did not mind helping.

At least, I do not think I minded.

That is the part I still have to sit with.

Did I genuinely want to say yes, or had I become so accustomed to being available that I stopped noticing when I wanted something different? Maybe both things were true.

I loved people.

I enjoyed being helpful.

I also learned that saying yes kept the peace around me while quietly disturbing the peace within me.

Sometimes resentment does not arrive because we dislike helping. It arrives because nobody considered that our yes might have cost us something.

One request becomes three, and one phone call leaves you carrying emotions that did not belong to you when the conversation began. Somebody hangs up feeling lighter, and you are left holding the leftovers.

That is not always love. Sometimes it is access, sometimes it is habit, sometimes people have grown accustomed to receiving the strongest parts of you without considering what it takes to keep those parts operational.

Love should not require one person to remain permanently on call. It should not demand that you absorb every emotion simply because someone chose you as the safest place to unload it.

You can love people without becoming their emotional landfill.

You can care without taking ownership, listen without volunteering to solve the situation, and hope everything works out without appointing yourself project manager of somebody else’s life.

Sometimes the sentence is simply:

“I cannot carry this tonight.”

Or:

“I love you, but I cannot fix this.”

Not a paragraph.

Not a closing argument presented before a jury of people committed to misunderstanding you.

A sentence.

The first few times you say it, your body may not experience it as freedom. It may feel like guilt sitting on your chest with shoes on. You might replay the conversation and wonder whether you were too harsh, or be tempted to call back, soften your answer, offer an alternative, explain your reasoning, or volunteer for half of what you already said you could not do.

That discomfort does not automatically mean the decision was wrong. It may mean you have spent years measuring goodness by how much of yourself you were willing to surrender.

The people around you will need time to adjust to the new distance. So will you.

A life-giving practice.

Not a temporary collapse.

Not hiding in the bathroom for ten minutes because that is the only place no one follows you.

Not disappearing for a weekend and returning to the same chaos with a better tan.

A practice means your life is arranged differently. It means everyone does not receive the same level of access. Some calls can wait. Some problems can return to the person who created them. Some family traditions can end with you.

Not because you stopped loving anyone.

Because you finally included yourself among the people deserving your care.

Excellence Should Not Require Your Erasure

Work is another place where women are taught to confuse depletion with devotion.

I know something about performing excellence. For eighteen years, I worked inside a predominantly white, male industry where the bar did not remain in one place long enough for me to reach it. Every time I met the expectation, the expectation moved. There was always more to prove, another responsibility to absorb, another level of performance required, but rarely a reward that reflected how high the standard had climbed.

I did not understand the politics at first. I believed what I had been told.

Work hard. Do a good job. Let the results speak for themselves.

Then someone told me that I did not know how to play the game. I remember being genuinely confused. What game? Nobody had told me there was a game. I thought we were there to work.

I did not yet understand that some people were being judged primarily by the quality of what they produced, while others were also being measured by how comfortably they catered to the culture already in power. That culture was white. That culture was male. And it had rules nobody had bothered to put in the employee handbook.

I did the work. I delivered. I stayed reliable. But excellence without political protection simply became the new minimum expected from me.

For Black women, competence is often treated like a subscription service that must be renewed every month. Yesterday’s excellence does not always carry over.

So we prepare. We check the details again. We anticipate the questions before they are asked. We fix what was handed to us half-done. We become the reliable person, which sounds like praise until reliability becomes the reason everybody else’s unfinished work keeps landing on our desk.

We are told we are invaluable while being treated as infinitely available.

We become the woman who can handle it.

Again.

There is pride in doing good work, and I will never pretend there is not. I enjoy knowing I delivered. I like excellence. I believe in taking responsibility for what has my name attached to it.

But there is a difference between doing excellent work and allowing a job to consume your identity. There is a point where ambition becomes overfunctioning, a point where commitment becomes self-erasure, a point where “I’ve got it” stops sounding like confidence and becomes a warning that nobody plans to help you.

Softness at work is not laziness. It is not showing up late, ignoring your commitments, or tossing your responsibilities into the air because you are protecting your peace. It is knowing that your value does not increase every time you exhaust yourself. It is allowing capacity to become part of the conversation.

It is saying:

“I can complete this by Friday, but something else will need to move.”

Or:

“I can support this project, but I cannot own all of it.”

Those are not diva statements.

They are adult statements.

Of course, the workplace is not always safe or fair. Some companies celebrate balance in the employee handbook and punish it in practice. Some supervisors hear a reasonable limit as a lack of commitment. Black women are not given the same freedom to be visibly frustrated, tired, firm, uncertain, or unavailable without risking judgment.

We have to read the room. We have to document. We have to understand the politics. We have to know when a direct no needs to become a strategic question.

That is not weakness.

That is discernment.

But strategy should not become lifelong silence. You can be thoughtful about how you protect yourself without pretending nothing is costing you.

A workplace that only celebrates you when you are depleted is not honoring your excellence. It is benefiting from your endurance. And endurance is not an unlimited natural resource.

That line stayed with me because a job can become greedy.

Not only for hours.

For identity.

It wants to become the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last concern you carry into bed. It wants your ideas during dinner, your worry during the weekend, and your emotional energy long after the laptop is closed.

A company will accept every piece of you that you hand over. It will not always remind you to keep something for yourself.

You have to remember that you existed before the position. You remain a person when the meeting ends. Your worth is not waiting inside an email inbox for someone to acknowledge it.

The title can change. The organization can restructure. A leader can leave. A department can disappear. A career that once felt permanent can shift because of a decision made in a room you were never invited into.

You need an identity that survives the organizational chart. You need a self that does not vanish when the workday begins.

That does not mean shrinking your ambition. It means refusing to sacrifice the woman for the résumé. It means wanting success that your body can survive.

The Body Eventually Sends an Invoice

This is where the idea of softness becomes more than an aesthetic conversation for me.

The body remembers what the mind keeps postponing. It knows when we are tired, even when we call it busy. It knows when we are angry, even when we call it professionalism. It knows when we feel used, frightened, overwhelmed, disappointed, or stretched too thin.

We can rename the experience. The body does not care. It keeps its own records.

My body had been trying to tell me for years. Every morning became a negotiation: how badly do I need to get out of this bed?

My rule was simple. If I could physically get up, I would drag myself to work. Not if I felt well. Not if I had the energy. Not if my mind and body were capable of giving anything meaningful that day. If I could stand, I went.

Over time, even that rule became harder to satisfy. I took more mental health days than traditional sick days because sometimes I was not fighting an illness I could easily name. I was fighting the crushing weight of having to make myself return.

Then one morning, I made a different decision. I was not leaving the bed. Not that day, and not for a while.

After eighteen years of service, I stopped calling, stopped reporting, and allowed the company’s no-call, no-show policy to process my voluntary resignation. They came looking for me. They contacted coworkers. They considered sending the police to my home for a wellness check. One colleague texted and asked for proof of life.

I let her know that I was alive and that the company could, as politely as possible, kiss my ass.

That may not sound soft.

But it was one of the clearest boundaries I had ever drawn.

For years, I had dragged myself through the door because I believed my ability to stand meant I was obligated to keep going. The company had left me struggling inside a system that kept taking from me, yet I still felt responsible for ensuring my departure caused them no inconvenience.

Eventually, something inside me refused.

I left them in a rut. And for once, I did not rush back to rescue the people who had been comfortable leaving me in one.

I owed them nothing.

Even now, I believe that.

I had spent years treating my body like equipment. Something expected to carry me through the day, complete the assignment, keep the commitment, survive the stress, and recover quickly enough to do it all again.

Rest came afterward. After the work. After the errands. After the phone calls. After everybody else was settled. After I had proven there was nothing left to give.

Only then could I stop.

That is not rest.

That is collapse with permission.

The body will cooperate with neglect for a while. It sends quiet messages first.

Fatigue. Tension. Poor sleep. An ache you keep dismissing. A need to sit down that you override because you are almost finished. Hunger you postpone. Pain you negotiate with. A heaviness you blame on laziness because admitting you are worn down feels more frightening.

Then the messages become harder to ignore.

The body does not ask politely forever.

I have learned that strength cannot only mean pushing through. Sometimes strength is stopping before your body has to shut the entire operation down. Sometimes it is eating something real before four in the afternoon. Sometimes it is deciding the task can wait. Sometimes it is admitting that pain is information, not an inconvenience. Sometimes it is allowing a slower pace to be a responsible decision instead of a personal failure.

We praise women for being able to carry so much, but rarely ask what the weight is doing to them. We admire the woman who works through pain. We compliment the one who never complains. We call her strong when she shows up during grief, sickness, exhaustion, and emotional devastation.

Then we act surprised when her body finally refuses to keep funding a life that gives it no care.

That refusal is not always betrayal.

Sometimes the body is the only part of you brave enough to say no.

We tend to imagine rest as the opposite of progress. Something we will do once we arrive. Once the book is finished. Once the business is stable. Once the house is clean. Once the family situation settles down. Once the appointments are handled. Once the list becomes reasonable.

But the list has never agreed to become reasonable.

There will always be something else.

Rest cannot remain the prize waiting at the end of a race that keeps extending the finish line. It has to become part of how we travel.

I say that as someone who still wrestles with it. I know how easy it is to turn productivity into proof that you are moving forward. I also know what it is like to look at a day of rest and see everything you could have accomplished instead.

I recently published two books that had been in motion for a long time. That accomplishment represents persistence, creativity, revision, frustration, and more work than most people will ever see when they hold the finished books in their hands.

I am proud of myself. But I barely allowed the pride to settle before I started scolding myself about the essay I had not posted. The books were finished, but my mind had already moved to what was late.

That is how quickly achievement can become another obligation. You climb one mountain, glance at the view for half a second, and immediately criticize yourself for not already being halfway up the next one.

Softness asks me to remain on the mountaintop long enough to acknowledge that I made it there. Not forever. Not while pretending deadlines do not exist. Just long enough to let accomplishment become an experience instead of another box checked on the way to exhaustion.

Celebration is part of caring for the body too.

Breathing. Pausing. Allowing good news to land before urgency snatches the moment away.

Softness Needs Structure

A softer life is not something you purchase once. It is not delivered in a shopping bag. It is not waiting inside a luxury hotel, although I remain fully willing to conduct further research on that possibility.

It is created by the way you arrange your obligations, energy, time, and expectations.

It lives in the pause before you automatically agree.

It lives in the decision not to answer the phone simply because it rang.

It lives in the email you leave until morning.

It lives in the lunch break you actually take.

It lives in acknowledging pain before your body has to scream.

It lives in letting another adult solve a problem that belongs to them.

It lives in allowing somebody to be disappointed without immediately abandoning yourself to make them comfortable.

None of this means every limit will feel peaceful. The beginning may feel anything but gentle. It may sound like silence after you stop overexplaining. It may look like relatives insisting you have changed. It may feel like coworkers testing whether you mean what you said. It may require sitting with the guilt you used to escape by agreeing to things you did not want to do.

The systems around you may resist the healthier version of you.

Of course they will.

Your over availability was convenient. Your silence kept certain arrangements intact. Your habit of carrying more than your share allowed other people to carry less.

When you stop, the imbalance becomes visible. That does not make you cruel. It means the old arrangement depended on your depletion.

A boundary is not revenge. It is not withholding love to make somebody suffer. It is not disappearing rather than communicating. It is not using the language of peace to avoid responsibility. It is a decision about what you will do when something no longer works for you.

If yelling begins, I will end the conversation. If the request requires more time than I have, I will not accept it. If my body needs rest, I will stop treating that need like an accusation.

The power is not in making everybody agree.

The power is in honoring what you said.

You may still care. You may still feel guilty. You may wish circumstances were different. None of that cancels the limit.

You do not need to become cold to become protected.

Boundaries do not make your love smaller.

They make it cleaner.

They allow you to help without quietly hating the person you agreed to help. They allow you to work without turning every assignment into a test of your worth. They allow you to stop before your body forces the issue. They make room for generosity that is freely chosen rather than extracted through guilt.

That is the kind of life I want.

Not one untouched by difficulty. One where difficulty does not automatically receive unlimited access to me. Not one where I never help. One where helping does not require disappearing. Not one where I reject ambition. One where success does not demand my destruction. Not one where the candle is meaningless. One where the peace does not end when the candle burns out.

Protect the Woman Inside the Atmosphere

I still want the robe. I still want the quiet room. I want the tea, the music, the vacation, the clean sheets, the brunch, and the sunlight falling across the kitchen counter at precisely the right angle. I want pleasure without having to justify it. I want beautiful experiences that do not need to teach me a lesson or become content. I want moments that exist only because they feel good.

We deserve those things. Especially women who have spent years being strong enough for everybody else.

But I no longer want softness to be something I visit between emergencies. I do not want peace to remain an occasional reward for surviving another difficult week. I do not want rest to be an emergency repair.

I want the structure that allows beautiful moments to reach me. I want family relationships that do not depend on my endless availability. I want work that respects my gifts without devouring the person who produces them. I want to live in my body as though it is home, not machinery.

That requires more than ambience. It requires honesty. It requires recognizing when a loving yes has turned into a resentful obligation. It requires admitting when excellence has become over functioning. It requires listening when the body whispers instead of waiting for it to stage a full rebellion.

A soft life is not about proving you are unbothered. It is about no longer volunteering to remain disturbed by what you have the power to address, limit, renegotiate, or release.

It is not about becoming selfish.

It is about refusing to remain absent from your own care.

So light the candle. Wear the robe. Play the playlist. Enjoy every beautiful thing you have made room for.

But protect the woman inside the atmosphere.

Protect her time.

Protect her body.

Protect her attention.

Protect the parts of her that have been available to everyone except herself.

Because candles burn out.

Boundaries hold.

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Who Are You When You Stop Performing Acceptability...?

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 01:23:38 GMT

Somewhere along the way, you learned which version of you got the least resistance.

Not the truest version. Not the fullest version. Not the one who laughed too loud, questioned too much, wanted too boldly, or told the truth without first softening it for the room.

The version that made other people comfortable.

I know that version well. I performed her for years and I had her timing down. When to smile. When to soften. When to add the exclamation point so nobody mistook my directness for attitude. When to say “no worries” with a straight face even though there were, in fact, several worries. When to make myself easier to digest so the room stayed comfortable and I stayed included.

And for a while, it worked.

People called me dependable. Professional. Easy to work with. Strong. The one everybody could count on.

What nobody asked, and what I had quietly stopped asking myself…was how much of that was actually peace, and how much of it was a performance I had just gotten very good at.

Because sometimes the version of you that everyone praises is the version that costs you the most.

The performance can be subtle

Performing acceptability is not always dramatic. It does not always look like becoming a completely different person.

Sometimes it looks like shaving off the edges.

Not lying exactly…editing. Not disappearing completely…dimming. Not betraying yourself all at once, but making tiny daily adjustments until one day you no longer recognize what your natural voice sounds like.

You say “I’m fine” because the truth would make people uncomfortable. You laugh at the joke because calling it out would change the room. You do not correct the person who keeps mispronouncing your name because you do not want to seem difficult. You understate your accomplishments because you do not want anyone calling you full of yourself. You hide your ambition because somebody might call you arrogant. You make your pain sound smaller so you will not be called dramatic. You say yes when your body is already begging for a no.

That is how people get lost.

Not always through one big betrayal. Sometimes through hundreds of small self-edits made in the name of keeping the peace.

You do not wake up one morning and decide to abandon yourself. Sometimes you just keep choosing the path of least resistance until one day you realize the person everybody likes is not the person you feel free to be.

The strong one still needs somewhere to be soft

For me, the performance did not always look like pretending to be someone I was not. Sometimes it looked like being the strong one, the helpful one, the people pleaser, the protector, and if I am being honest, sometimes even the enabler.

I thought I was being loving. I thought I was being loyal. I thought I was being a good sister, the great fun aunt, the loyal friend, the dependable one…the kind of woman people could count on. Those titles meant something to me. They gave me a place. A sense of identity and purpose in seasons when I did not feel like I had much else going on for myself.

I was not just helping. I was building an identity around being needed.

And I had been taught that you help family. You show up. You do not keep score. You do not make everything about you. You do not let people struggle when you have the ability to help. So I stretched. I adjusted. I made room. I carried what was not mine because I genuinely believed that was what love required.

But eventually, I had to tell myself the truth.

Come to find out, some of that loyalty was one-sided. Some of what I called helping was enabling. Some of what I called being strong was really me disappearing behind other people’s needs. And that is a hard truth to sit with…especially when the role once made you feel valuable.

Because here is what happens when you build your identity around being needed: the strong one gets called first. The strong one is expected to understand, to forgive, to figure it out, to bounce back. The strong one is expected to hold the family together, keep the peace, absorb the tension, and still show up with a smile.

People love the strong one because she makes life easier for everyone else.

But what happens when the strong one is tired? What happens when she needs help, tenderness, patience, or protection? What happens when she is no longer available to be everybody’s emotional shock absorber?

That is when you find out who loved you and who loved your labor. Who wanted relationship and who wanted access. Who misses you, and who only misses what you used to do for them. And that discovery can hurt deeply. Because when you have built part of your identity around being needed, boundaries can feel like betrayal. Not just to other people. To yourself.

You feel guilty for not answering the phone. Selfish for saying no. Cold for not rescuing someone from the consequences of their own choices. But maybe you are not becoming cold. Maybe you are becoming honest. Maybe you are not becoming selfish. Maybe you are becoming responsible for your own life again. Maybe the people who say you have changed are not entirely wrong. Maybe you are different. And maybe different is the first honest thing you have been in years.

Acceptability is not the same as belonging

This is the trap so many of us fall into. We think being accepted means we belong. But sometimes acceptability only means the room has approved the version of you that serves its comfort.

Belonging is different.

Belonging does not require you to leave your truth at the door. It does not require you to constantly monitor your face, your tone, your brilliance, your boundaries, your needs. Belonging does not make you feel like you are one honest sentence away from exile.

Acceptance can say: We like you as long as you do not disrupt the script.

Belonging says: You do not have to disappear to be loved here.

That difference matters more than people talk about.

Because many people are not lonely because they are alone. They are lonely because they are surrounded by people who only know the edited version of them. They are praised, needed, invited, included, and still starving to be known. Loved for what they provide, but not cared for as a whole person. Celebrated for being strong, but never given permission to be tired.

That is not belonging. That is a performance with witnesses.

Family can teach the first script

Family is often where we learn to perform in the first place.

Some families do not ask, “Who are you becoming?” They ask, “Why can’t you just be who we are used to?” So you learn your role. The responsible one. The quiet one. The funny one. The strong one. The one who does not need much. The one who keeps the peace. The one who absorbs the tension so everyone else can pretend the family is fine.

And when that role gets rewarded, it feels like love.

People praise you for being mature. Dependable. The one they never have to worry about. They praise you for understanding, for not making a fuss, for being so easy. But sometimes what people call easy is really you not feeling safe enough to tell the truth. Sometimes what people call loyal is really you being afraid of what would happen if you stopped showing up. Sometimes what people call strong is really you not knowing where to fall apart.

Then you grow. You change. You start getting language for things…boundaries, emotional labor, capacity, reciprocity, accountability, self-respect. And suddenly the family says you are acting different.

Maybe you are.

Maybe you are no longer willing to perform the version of yourself that made dysfunction more comfortable. Maybe you are no longer willing to confuse love with overextension. Maybe you are no longer willing to resurrect a smaller self just because somebody else preferred her. When you stop performing, some people will miss the version of you they could manage. Let them miss her. You are not required to keep abandoning yourself so other people can recognize you.

The friendship version

Friendship performance hides behind loyalty, which is what makes it so painful.

You keep showing up as the fun one, even when you are grieving. You stay the listener, even when you are desperate to be heard. You become the planner, the fixer, the ride, the therapist, the hype woman, the voice of reason…all of it, all the time.

But you do not always let people see when you are empty. You do not want to be a burden. You do not want to find out that the friendship only works when you are useful, entertaining, agreeable, or available.

So you keep playing your part.

Then one day you realize something quietly devastating: some people love your presence but they do not know your interior life. They know your laugh. They know your advice. They know your availability. But they do not know what it costs you to keep being that version. And maybe they never asked. Or maybe you never let them.

Either way, the performance becomes lonely.

Because being liked is not the same as being known. And being needed is not the same as being loved well.

The workplace version

At work, acceptability becomes a second job.

You are doing the work you were hired to do, and then you are also doing the invisible work of managing how people perceive you doing it. That is a lot to carry, and most people never acknowledge that it is even happening.

You think before every email. Was that too direct? Should I soften this? Should I add “just checking in” even though the deadline was yesterday? Should I make this warmer so nobody mistakes clarity for attitude?

Then in meetings, you calculate. If I speak now, will I be seen as aggressive? If I stay quiet, will I be overlooked? If I correct this, will I be called combative? If someone takes my idea and gets praised for it, do I reclaim it or swallow it?

This is not insecurity. This is pattern recognition.

Especially for Black women, who have learned that professionalism often means being excellent and emotionally nonthreatening at the same time. Sharp, but not too sharp. Warm, but not too familiar. Confident, but not too proud. Honest, but not too honest. Visible, but not too visible.

And in corporate spaces, I knew the value of being seen as the cooperative team member, professional, and easy to work with, even when the room made that cooperation feel like another form of self-editing.

You are expected to bring your full talent but not your full self. And if you are not careful, you can spend years perfecting a version of yourself that can survive the room but cannot breathe in it.

The cost of being easy

There is a real cost to being the easy one that rarely gets named out loud.

The easy one gets overburdened. The easy one gets praised instead of supported. The easy one learns to make disappointment look like maturity. She learns to make silence look like grace. She learns to make self-abandonment look like emotional intelligence.

Let’s tell the truth.

Some of what people call your grace is really you not wanting the consequences of honesty. Some of what people call your patience is really you waiting for someone to become considerate without requiring it of them. Some of what people call your peacekeeping is really you being expected to absorb dysfunction quietly.

That does not mean you become reckless or say everything you think. Discernment still matters. But discernment is not the same as disappearance. Strategy is not the same as self-erasure. And wisdom is not the same as shrinking.

I am still a nice person. I still love helping people. But I have boundaries now. I have limitations with people now. I no longer stretch my bandwidth to perform or conform. I do not want a version of family, friendship, or professional life that only works when I am overextending myself.

That is not me becoming cold. That is me becoming honest.

When you have been defined by other people

Toni Morrison wrote that definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

That line lands because so much of our pain begins when we start living inside definitions we did not choose.

Too loud. Too sensitive. Too ambitious. Too emotional. Too intimidating. Too opinionated. Too much. Not enough.

Those labels can become instructions if you are not careful. You become quieter because someone called you loud. Smaller because someone called you intimidating. You stop asking questions because someone called you difficult. You stop wanting more because someone called you ungrateful. You stop telling the truth because someone called you negative. You stop expressing pain because someone called you dramatic.

And little by little, their discomfort becomes your identity. That is not humility. That is captivity. At some point you have to ask: Who told me this was all I was allowed to be? Who benefits from me believing that? And what version of me have I been protecting them from?

The ache of not knowing yourself anymore

This is the part that gets quiet.

Because sometimes you have performed so long that you genuinely do not know what is performance and what is personality anymore.

You do not know if you actually like being dependable or if you became dependable because nobody gave you a choice. You do not know if you are really private or if you learned that sharing gave people weapons. You do not know if you are laid back or if you are just scared to ask for what you need. You do not know if you are humble or afraid of being seen. You do not know if you are peaceful or conflict avoidant. You do not know if you are easygoing or if you have abandoned your preferences so many times that you stopped having any.

That is a specific kind of heartbreak. Not because you are empty. Because you are buried.

The real you is not gone. She is under the approvals. Under the adaptations. Under the old family rules. Under the workplace armor. Under the “be nice” and the “do not embarrass us” and the “pick your battles” and the “who do you think you are.” And maybe healing is not becoming a brand new person. Maybe healing is recovering the one you kept editing just to survive.

This is not permission to be careless

Let me be clear, because this part matters.

Authenticity is not emotional recklessness. It does not mean dumping your pain on everyone. It does not mean every thought needs a microphone. It does not mean every workplace deserves your deepest truth or every family gathering needs a confrontation.

Some rooms are not safe. Some people are not trustworthy. Some situations require wisdom, timing, and restraint.

But there is a difference between choosing privacy and hiding in shame. There is a difference between being strategic and being terrified. There is a difference between reading the room and letting the room rewrite you.

You do not owe everyone full access. But you do owe yourself honesty about who you become when approval is on the line.

That is the work.

What are you afraid would happen if you stopped performing?

This is the real question. Not “Who am I?”…sometimes that question is too big to hold all at once.

Start here instead: What am I afraid would happen if I stopped performing?

Would they leave? Would they judge me? Would they call me difficult? Would they stop needing me, stop inviting me, stop praising me? Would they realize I am not always okay? Would they be disappointed that I have needs? Would they prefer the old me?

Would I have to admit that some relationships only worked because I was not being honest?

That last one is the one that hurts the most.

Because when you stop performing, you do not just discover yourself. You discover who was attached to your disappearance. Who loved your silence more than your truth. Who wanted your talent but not your voice. Who wanted the benefit of you without the responsibility of actually knowing you.

And that discovery can feel lonely.

But it can also be liberating. Because losing access to people who only valued your performance is not the same as losing love. Sometimes it is losing the audience that kept you exhausted.

The body knows when the performance is too expensive

Your body tells the truth long before your mouth is ready to.

Notice what happens when you are around certain people or in certain rooms. Do you breathe differently? Do you monitor your face? Do you rehearse before you speak? Do you feel relieved when plans fall through? Do you need hours to recover after being “on”? Do you leave interactions feeling like you betrayed yourself even though nothing obviously bad happened?

That is information.

Not proof that everyone around you is terrible. Not a signal to cut everyone off. But information your body is offering you…I am tired of pretending here. I am tired of being tolerated instead of known. I am tired of being edited before I even enter the room.

And if you keep ignoring that information, your life can look perfectly functional while your spirit feels homeless.

That is not sustainable.

Start with one honest place

You do not have to reveal your whole self to the whole world all at once. That is not the assignment.

The assignment is to find one place where you stop performing.

One conversation. One boundary. One honest answer. One moment where you do not apologize for your intelligence. One relationship where you stop pretending something does not bother you. One moment where you say, “Actually, I do care.” One moment where you say, “No, that does not work for me.” One moment where you let yourself be seen without immediately managing the other person’s reaction.

Start there.

Small honesty is still honesty. A small return to yourself is still a return.

Self-preservation is not selfish

Audre Lorde wrote that caring for yourself is not self-indulgence…it is self-preservation.

That quote has been shared so many times it risks becoming a caption. But do not let its popularity soften its meaning.

For women who have been expected to serve, shrink, endure, translate, soothe, produce, forgive, smile, and remain useful…self-preservation is not a spa day aesthetic. It is a refusal to disappear.

It is saying: I will not be consumed by roles that never cared whether I survived them. I will not confuse approval with alignment. I will not keep trading my truth for temporary belonging. I will not keep making myself easier to tolerate while becoming harder for myself to live with.

That is not selfish. That is sacred. That is grown. That is necessary.

Who are you without the script?

So I will ask you one more time:

Who are you when you stop performing acceptability?

Not the polished answer.

Not the practiced answer.

Not the answer you give because it sounds healed, wise, mature, or easy to explain.

The honest one.

The one that rises when nobody is asking you to prove your goodness.

The one that speaks when you are no longer trying to keep a role alive.

The one that knows the difference between love and obligation.

The one that knows a full yes cannot come from an empty woman.

I do not think every question needs an immediate answer.

Some questions need to sit with you long enough to tell the truth.

But for me, I know this much: I am still kind, still loving, still generous, and loyal, to a point, but I am no longer available for the kind of love that requires me to disappear.

I am no longer confusing exhaustion with loyalty.

I am no longer mistaking usefulness for love.

And I am no longer auditioning for belonging in places where my full self was never truly welcome.

That does not mean I have all the answers.

It means I am finally willing to stop abandoning myself while I figure them out.

That may disappoint some people.

It may confuse others.

It may even make some folks call me different.

And maybe they are right.

Maybe I am different now.

Different enough to pause before I overextend.

Different enough to know that guilt is not always a stop sign.

Different enough to understand that love should not require me to hand over pieces of myself just to keep the peace.

Different enough to choose myself without making a public apology for it.

That is not bitterness.

That is wisdom with receipts.

That is what happens when a woman finally admits she is tired of being celebrated for what is slowly costing her.

So no, I am not becoming harder.

I am not becoming colder.

I am not becoming less loving.

I am becoming more honest about what love, loyalty, friendship, family, and belonging are allowed to ask of me.

And what they are not.

Here is what I want you to hold onto.

You are not fake because you adapted.

You are not weak because you learned how to survive.

You are not wrong because you became acceptable in rooms, families, friendships, and workplaces that punished authenticity.

But you are allowed to outgrow the performance.

You are allowed to stop confusing approval with safety.

You are allowed to stop being grateful for spaces that only welcomed the watered-down version of you.

You are allowed to want belonging that does not require self-abandonment.

You are allowed to be complex and clear.

Tender and direct.

Brilliant and still learning.

Kind without being compliant.

Strategic without being silent.

Loved without being easy to consume.

And if some people do not recognize you when you stop performing, let them be confused.

Maybe they never knew you.

Maybe they only knew the version of you that kept them comfortable.

You are not here to spend your life becoming palatable.

You are not here to be the least disruptive version of yourself.

You are not here to be chosen by people who require your disappearance as the entry fee.

You are here to come home to yourself.

Fully.

Honestly.

Wisely.

Without apology.

The question is not whether people will still accept you when the performance ends.

The question is whether you will finally accept the version of you that no longer wants to perform.

And when that version of you rises, do not shrink her back down.

Let her breathe.

Let her speak.

Let her choose.

Let her disappoint the people who only benefited from her silence.

Let her be unfamiliar.

Let her be inconvenient.

Let her be free.

Because the goal was never to become harder, colder, or less loving.

The goal was to stop mistaking self-abandonment for love in the first place.

And as for ME…I’m

Still loving.

Still learning.

Still becoming.

Still worthy.

And finally, finally, willing to belong to myself first.

Subscribe to Premier Perspective for more honest reflections on self-trust, survival patterns, emotional clarity, and becoming the woman you no longer have to abandon.

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The Monthly Pause | June 2026 | Issue 01

Pennie Stewart — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 03:56:12 GMT

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Monthly Pause.

In a world that constantly pushes us toward the next goal, the next deadline, and the next thing on the to-do list, I wanted to create a space to do something different: pause.

Not stop. Not give up. Just breathe, reflect, and take stock of the journey.

Each month, I’ll share a glimpse behind the scenes of life, business, writing, growth, and everything in between. Some months will be filled with wins. Some will be filled with lessons. Most will be a little messy, a little meaningful, and a reminder that growth rarely happens in a straight line.

Think of this as a conversation over tea, or maybe a strong Cosmo, depending on the kind of month we’ve had…a moment to reflect on where we’ve been, celebrate how far we’ve come, and consider where we’re headed next.

I’m glad you’re here.

Let’s pause together.

~ Pennie, XO

June came in acting like it had an agenda.

Some days I was focused, productive, and convinced I was about to get my whole life in order. Other days? The weather got disrespectful, my plans fell apart, and I did not do a blessed thing except look at my to-do list like it had personally offended me.

And honestly? It kind of had.

This month gave me bike rides, live music, theater, good conversations, business ideas, writing progress, and a few reminders that I am still very much a woman in progress. Not a finished product. Not a polished brand story. Not one of those people who wakes up at 5 a.m., drinks lemon water, journals by candlelight, and has their life together before sunrise.

No shade to them…Actually, a little shade.

I’ve been thinking a lot about taking up space lately. In my work. In my writing. In my body. In my life. There is something powerful about realizing you do not need to be fully healed, fully polished, fully booked, fully anything before you are allowed to show up.

June was not perfect. It was not wildly glamorous. It was not giving soft-life montage every day…But it was real.

And sometimes real is the most useful thing we have.

So welcome to this month’s pause: part reflection, part recap, part “girl, what even happened?” and part reminder that progress still counts even when it arrives with attitude, delays, detours, and a strong desire to take a nap.

Let’s get into it.

I spent a good portion of June convinced I was supposed to have it all figured out by now.

Adorable of me.

Life, as usual, had notes.

This month reminded me that most of us aren’t arriving anywhere. We’re works in progress…collecting lessons, changing our minds, making pivots we didn’t plan, and occasionally staring at our to-do lists with the same energy we reserve for disappointing exes and customer service hold music.

June was not a month of arrival. I didn’t finish everything, let’s even say I didn’t finish much of anything. I didn’t check every box. I did not magically wake up as the fully evolved, unbothered, got-it-all-together version of myself.

What I did do?

I wrote. I rode my bike. I went for walks, the farmer’s market is my hot spot these days. I showed up. I started things and kept building them even when the finish line felt like a rumor.

That’s not failure. That’s the work.

Not perfection. Not completion.

Becoming.

And honestly? That’s enough.

One thing that’s been rattling around in my head lately is accountability.

Or maybe the lack of it.

I’ve watched a few stories unfold this month where people seemed genuinely shocked to discover that actions have consequences. Businesses discovering that customers can spend their money elsewhere. Public figures discovering that people remember what was said. Organizations discovering that trust, once lost, isn’t automatically restored because someone issues a statement.

It’s been a month full of what the internet affectionately calls FAFO moments.

And while I try not to celebrate anyone’s downfall, I do find myself fascinated by how often people underestimate the power of collective action. Especially when it comes to Black consumers. Every few years someone decides our voices don’t matter, our concerns don’t matter, or our dollars don’t matter.

Then reality shows up with a calculator.

At the same time, I’ve found myself asking harder questions about accountability in other areas. Why do some people lose everything over one mistake while others seem to survive things that should have ended their careers? Why are some standards enforced and others ignored? Why does doing the right thing sometimes seem optional?

I don’t have answers.

I’m mostly sitting with the questions.

But June reminded me that integrity matters. Accountability matters. And eventually, whether we like it or not, consequences tend to find their way to the people and institutions that believed they were exempt from them.

Booking coaching sessions and client wins
New workshops in the works
Developing new resources and journals
Seeking speaking opportunities

Learn more on how we can work together…

As of this publication, we are at:

This month, Premier Perspective reached 100 subscribers, and I couldn’t let the moment pass without saying thank you.

Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or joined just yesterday, I’m grateful you chose to spend a little of your time with me each week. Every comment, recommendation, share, and conversation helps this community grow.

If Premier Perspective has encouraged you, challenged you, or simply made you smile, I’d love for you to share it with someone who might enjoy the journey too.

Here’s to the first 100...and to everything we’re becoming together.

The pause is over. Life is waiting. Go take up space…and remember: Growth ain’t pretty…!! I’ll meet you back here next month.

~ Pennie, XO

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When “I Got It” Really Means “I’m Tired of Being Disappointed”

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 12:03:29 GMT

It’s 11:47 p.m.

Marcus is sitting on the edge of his bed with a cracked phone screen, scrolling past three unanswered texts from his sister, one missed call from his mother, and a Venmo request from a friend he loaned money to last month.

His back has been hurting for two weeks. He hasn’t told anyone.

Tomorrow, when his sister calls and asks how he’s doing, he’ll say, “I’m good. Just busy.”

He is not good.

He’s also not exactly lying. He just learned a long time ago that “I’m good” is cheaper than the conversation that comes after the truth.

There’s a version of “I got it” that sounds strong from the outside. Capable. Efficient. Responsible. The kind of phrase people praise because it makes their lives easier.

“I got it.”

“No worries.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s fine.”

But sometimes “I got it” doesn’t mean you’re okay. Sometimes it means you’ve stopped expecting people to show up. Sometimes it means you’re tired of explaining what you need to people who only hear you when it is convenient. Sometimes it means you would rather struggle in silence than feel that specific sting of asking for help and being disappointed again.

There are few things more painful than needing support from someone who already taught you not to expect it. So you stop asking. You stop reaching. You stop leaving room for anybody to come through.

Then one day, people start calling you independent. Strong. Disciplined. Reliable. Unshakable. They’re not completely wrong. They’re also not completely right. Because what they’re calling strength may be exhaustion with good posture. What they’re calling independence may be a wound with a work ethic. That’s the part we need to talk about.

When independence becomes armor

Independence isn’t the problem.

Being able to care for yourself is a beautiful thing. Knowing how to manage your money, make decisions, protect your peace, and move when nobody is clapping for you is not a weakness. That’s maturity. That’s survival. That’s sometimes the only reason you’re still standing.

But there’s a difference between independence and armor.

Healthy independence says: I am capable of handling my life.

Armor says: I cannot trust anyone to help me handle my life.

Healthy independence lets support come close.

Armor rejects support before it has a chance to disappoint you.

Healthy independence says, “I can do this, but I don’t always have to do this alone.”

Armor says, “If I need someone, they’ll either fail me, shame me, control me, or leave.”

That’s not independence anymore. That’s a survival skill that has started running your life.

Three people you probably know

Maya is the friend in every group chat who remembers everyone’s birthday, sends the “praying for you” text before the surgery, and checks in on people three days after they vent.

When she’s the one falling apart, her response is, “I’m fine, just tired.” Not because she’s being thoughtful. Because she’s bracing for neglect. She’s already done the math on who would actually pick up the phone, and the answer hurts.

David has been managing quiet panic about his job for six months. He hasn’t told his wife. He hasn’t told his brother, who lives twenty minutes away. He has watched two YouTube videos on negotiating severance and bookmarked a third. When his wife asks if everything is okay, he says, “Yeah, just a lot going on at work.” She knows he’s lying. He knows she knows. Neither of them says anything.

Renee runs her own business. She is the CEO, the bookkeeper, the social media manager, the customer service department, and the person crying in Canva at 1 a.m. When people ask how it’s going, she says, “I’m building.” She is. She’s also drowning. But “I’m drowning” doesn’t fit the brand, and she’s afraid that the second she admits the gap between where she is and where she wants to be, someone will use it against her.

Different lives. Same pattern. They all learned to make need look like competence.

And if I’m being honest, I know that pattern too.

I know what it feels like to become the person who handles things because not handling them never felt like an option. I know what it feels like to say “I got it” when what I really meant was, “I’m not asking again.” I know what it feels like to be praised for being strong when the truth is, I was just tired of being disappointed.

And honestly? I sort of made my own bed with this.

I was so used to being let down that whenever trouble found me…big or small…I would go quiet. Hibernate. Stay inside the problem alone until I had worked my way out of it. Nobody knew I was in it. Nobody knew when I got out. Because I had tried the other way. I had reached out, shared what I was carrying, and watched people hand me the most obvious answers imaginable. The low-hanging fruit. The “have you tried just...” solutions. And every time, something in me thought:

do you think I haven’t already thought of that?

It felt less like help and more like proof that they hadn’t really listened. That they wanted to appear helpful without doing the work of actually understanding. And then came the part I couldn’t shake: now they know my business. Now it lives with them. Now it can be used.

So I stopped giving people the chance.

What I noticed, though…and this is the part that convicted me…is that when the opportunity came for me to help them, I showed up differently. I thought about what they’d already tried. I asked questions before offering answers. I actually listened.

I had more empathy for their struggle than they ever offered mine.

That asymmetry told me something. Not that they were bad people. But that I had learned to expect so little that I stopped giving anyone the chance to prove me wrong. That is the tricky part about survival. Sometimes people admire the very thing that is wearing you out. They see the discipline. They see the results. They see the way you keep moving. They do not always see the emotional invoice attached to being the one who always figures it out.

If any of this landed, keep reading. Not because something is wrong with you. Because you’ve been carrying something that was never meant to be carried alone, and the pattern that helped you survive may be starting to cost more than it’s worth.

The people who never ask are not always okay

Some people don’t ask for help because they don’t need it. Most people who say “I got it” all the time don’t fall in that category. They learned early that needing people was dangerous.

Maybe you were the oldest child who had to grow up while everyone else got to have feelings. Maybe you were the dependable one, the responsible one, the one who “always figures it out.” Maybe you watched the adults around you collapse, disappear, rage, neglect, overpromise, underdeliver, or make you feel like your needs were extra.

So you adapted. You became low maintenance. You became useful. You became easy to praise and hard to support. You learned how to say “I’m good” before anybody had a chance to prove they didn’t care enough to ask twice.

Now, as an adult, you’ve built a whole life around not needing too much. Not asking too loudly. Not hoping too openly. Not giving people the chance to let you down.

It looks like confidence. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s grief that learned to pay its own bills.

“I got it” can hide resentment

Here’s the part nobody likes to admit.

When you say “I got it” too many times while secretly wishing someone would help, resentment starts growing in the background. Not because you’re mean. Because your mouth is saying yes while your body is saying, “Again?”

You agree to host.

You agree to drive.

You agree to cover the bill.

You agree to be flexible.

You agree to let it slide.

You tell the coworker, “I’ll just do it,” because explaining the task feels harder than doing it alone.

You tell the friend, “Don’t worry about it,” but you remember exactly who didn’t show up.

You refuse help carrying the groceries, then feel invisible when nobody notices your hands are full.

Then later, you’re irritated. You’re short. You’re emotionally unavailable. You’re quietly keeping score. You’re mad people didn’t offer what you never asked for, or what you asked for so many times before that asking again felt humiliating.

That’s real.

It’s also a signal. Resentment often tells the truth before you’re ready to say it out loud.

It may be telling you:

I am overextended.

I am under supported.

I am tired of being assumed available.

Resentment isn’t always bitterness. Sometimes it’s a boundary trying to be born.

The problem with being “low maintenance”

Some of us have built a whole identity around not needing much.

“I don’t ask for much.”

“I’m easy.”

“I can make do.”

Be careful with that.

There’s a difference between being grounded and being neglected. There’s a difference between gratitude and self denial. There’s a difference between being flexible and being trained to accept crumbs without complaint.

Sometimes “I don’t ask for much” really means, “I learned not to expect much.”

That’s not peace.

That’s adaptation.

And adaptation can save you in one season and suffocate you in the next. The same survival skill that helped you endure disappointment may now be blocking connection, rest, collaboration, intimacy, and ease. That doesn’t make you broken. It makes you overdue for a new strategy.

Support is a resilience skill, not a weakness

The American Psychological Association describes resilience as the process and outcome of adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. Its guidance on building resilience also names connection and supportive relationships as important pieces of that process.

That matters because many of us were taught a version of strength that looks like isolation.

Carry it.

Hide it.

Push through.

Don’t complain.

Don’t let them see you sweat.

Don’t let them see you wanting.

But if your definition of strength requires you to be unsupported, it may not be strength at all. It may be abandonment with better branding.

Real strength can say:

“I need help thinking this through.”

“I can’t take that on right now.”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“I’d appreciate support.”

“I cannot be the only one holding this.”

That’s not weakness.

That’s emotional adulthood.

How to tell if “I got it” has become armor

Read these slowly and tell yourself the truth.

· Do you say “I got it” before you’ve actually checked whether you have capacity?

· Do you reject help automatically, then feel resentful that nobody supports you?

· Do you assume people will disappoint you before giving them a chance to show up?

· Do you feel safer being needed than being supported?

· Do you secretly believe your value comes from being useful?

· Do you call yourself independent when you’re actually isolated?

· Do you keep saying yes because saying no would disappoint people who rarely consider what disappoints you?

· Do you minimize your needs because being honest about them feels like begging?

If any of those landed, don’t panic and don’t shame yourself. This isn’t a character flaw. It’s information. And information can become freedom once you stop using it to punish yourself.

What to do instead

You don’t have to go from “I got it” to full vulnerability overnight. You don’t have to hand your tender places to people who haven’t earned access. That wouldn’t be healing. That would be self-betrayal in softer clothes. Start smaller.

This week, pick one thing you would normally absorb alone. Not your deepest wound. Not the thing you can barely say out loud. Something manageable. A task. A worry. A piece of bad news. A logistical mess.

Then practice these three shifts.

One.

Tell one trusted person the actual truth.

Not the polished version. Not “I’m fine, just busy.”

Try, “I’m carrying more than I want to admit, and I’m not sure who to say it to.”

You’re not asking them to fix it. You’re letting them in.

See what happens. Pay attention to who gets curious, who gets quiet, who makes space, and who makes it about them. That is information too.

Two.

Let someone do the thing.

If a friend offers to bring food, say yes.

If a colleague offers to take the meeting notes, say yes.

If your partner offers to handle dinner, don’t redirect, don’t downsize the offer, and don’t repay them by overperforming somewhere else.

Just receive.

That may sound simple, but for people who are used to being the reliable one, receiving can feel almost suspicious.

Let it be awkward. Let it be new. Let it count.

I’ll be honest with you…the first time I practiced this, I said yes to something small and then spent the next twenty minutes trying to figure out how to repay it. That’s how deep the conditioning runs. Receiving felt like debt. But I kept practicing. And slowly, slowly, “thank you” started to feel like enough.

But what shifted something deeper for me was something someone said that I hadn’t considered before.

They told me that refusing someone’s offer doesn’t just block your own blessing, it may block theirs too. That the person extending help, extending care, extending themselves toward you carries a blessing in that act. And when you deflect it, redirect it, minimize it, or hand it back…you’ve taken something from them without realizing it.

I had never thought of it that way.

I had always framed receiving as a transaction I owed something on. Never as a gift that completed a circle. And even now, if I’m being honest, I still find ways to give something back to ease the discomfort of having been on the receiving end. I still feel the pull to balance it out, return the favor, make it even. I hate that receiving still feels foreign to me. I hate that I can’t always fully settle into it and just let it be good.

But I’m learning.

And part of the learning is understanding that when someone offers and you accept…really accept…you’re not just taking. You’re participating in something that was meant to move in both directions.

Three.

Notice what comes up in your body.

Relief?

Guilt?

Suspicion?

The urge to even the score? The need to explain why you needed help in the first place? That reaction is the lesson. Receiving feels uncomfortable when you’ve been over functioning for years. That doesn’t mean support is wrong. It means support is unfamiliar.

The work isn’t to trust everyone. The work is to stop trusting nobody. Because nobody is a lonely place to live.

You’re allowed to need care too

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned how to be impressive instead of honest. We learned how to be dependable instead of held. We learned how to be strong instead of supported. We learned how to say “I got it” because “Can you help me?” felt too risky.

But you are not here just to be useful. You are not here just to be resilient. You are not here just to be the one everyone counts on while you quietly wonder who you can count on.

Audre Lorde wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.”

And sometimes self preservation looks like finally telling the truth about what carrying everything has cost you.

You’re allowed to need care too. You’re allowed to need help that doesn’t come with a lecture. You’re allowed to be capable and still be cared for.

Both can be true.

So the next time “I got it” rises to your lips, pause and ask yourself: Do I really have it? Or am I just tired of being disappointed? The answer might tell you where the healing needs to begin.

As for Marcus…

The next morning, his sister called at 8:47 a.m.

She asked how he was doing.

He opened his mouth to say, “I’m good.”

And then he paused.

Just for a second.

That pause is where healing starts.

Before you go, I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually sit with it:

Which one of them was you? Maya, who gives endlessly because receiving feels like a setup? David, who is managing something in silence because admitting it feels like losing? Or Renee, who is building something real while quietly drowning in the gap between where she is and where she said she’d be by now?

Drop it in the comments. You don’t have to explain. One name is enough.

—

If you read this whole thing and recognized yourself somewhere in it - in Marcus, in Maya, in the version of you that learned to say “I got it” before anyone had a chance to disappoint you, that recognition is the beginning of something.

Premier Perspective exists for the woman who is tired of being strong in a way that costs her everything. Every essay I write is for her. For you.

If you’re not subscribed yet, this is your invitation. Not because I have all the answers. But because you deserve a space where someone names the thing out loud…and you don’t have to pretend it didn’t land.

Subscribe below. Stay as long as it’s useful.

I Am Not Crazy. I Am Noticing...

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 13:36:27 GMT

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from not knowing whether you are hurt or being dramatic. Whether you saw what you saw. Whether you have the right to be upset. Whether you owe somebody an apology for being upset in the first place.

I know that tired.

I have had conversations where I walked in clear and walked out confused. I knew what I heard. I knew what I felt. I knew something in me had gone quiet. But somehow, by the end, I was the one explaining my tone, apologizing for my timing, and wondering if maybe I had made the whole thing bigger than it needed to be. That is a special kind of emotional exhaustion, when someone does not just hurt you, they make you feel responsible for noticing. And once that happens enough times, you start doing the work for them. You replay the conversation. Then you replay your tone. Then you build a case against yourself like you are both the witness and the defendant.

Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe I am being too sensitive.

Maybe I should just let it go.

And just like that, the original thing that hurt you is no longer the center of the conversation. The trial is now about your reaction. Your delivery. Your face. Your timing. Your “energy.” That is where many of us lose ourselves. Not in the explosion. In the afterthought. In the part where we leave the conversation less clear than we were when we entered it. So before we go any further, let me give you the lens that changes everything.

A trigger asks: Why did this hurt so much?

Gaslighting asks: Why do I feel less clear after talking to them? Hold onto that. It will do more work than anything else I tell you today.

Not everything is gaslighting

Let’s be honest. Not everything is gaslighting.

Sometimes people miscommunicate. Sometimes someone says something poorly. Sometimes we hear today’s conversation through yesterday’s wound. Sometimes old pain walks into a new room before we do. Someone says, “I need to talk to you,” and your stomach drops because the last time someone said that, the conversation ended badly. Someone takes too long to text back, and suddenly you are not in the present anymore. You are back with the person who disappeared, lied, ignored you, or made you feel foolish for needing basic consistency. Someone gives you a vague answer at work, and your body braces because you have worked with people before who left you unsupported and then blamed you for not knowing what nobody told you.

That does not mean your feelings are fake.

It means your feelings need context. A trigger is not proof that someone harmed you. A trigger is proof that something in you remembers harm. That distinction matters. A trigger says, “This feels familiar.” It does not always mean, “This is the same thing.” That is where self-awareness becomes power. Not because it teaches you to ignore yourself, but because it helps you ask better questions. What did this moment actually remind me of? What was said? What did I assume? Is this person actually unsafe, or did they touch an old bruise? That is not self-betrayal. That is self-leadership.

But sometimes it is not just a misunderstanding. Sometimes they are twisting the truth. Sometimes they are denying what happened because admitting it would require accountability. Sometimes they are using your emotions as a distraction from their behavior. Sometimes they are not confused at all.

They are counting on you to be.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes gaslighting as a form of emotional abuse that causes someone to question their own feelings, instincts, and sanity. Cleveland Clinic also emphasizes that gaslighting is usually ongoing, not one isolated disagreement.

That matters.

A single bad conversation is not automatically gaslighting. A repeated pattern of denial, distortion, blame shifting, and confusion is something else entirely. Discernment is the work of telling the difference. Not calling everybody toxic. Not excusing everybody either. Just learning to recognize what is actually in front of you.

Gaslighting makes you question what you know happened

A trigger may make you question your reaction. Gaslighting makes you question your reality. You bring up something that happened, and they act like you invented it. You repeat their own words back, and suddenly they say, “I never said that.” You ask for clarity, and they respond with, “You always do this.” You say, “That hurt me,” and they say, “You are too sensitive.” You say, “You embarrassed me,” and they say, “It was just a joke.”

Now you are not discussing the harm anymore. You are defending your right to recognize it. That is the shift. That is the part people miss.

Gaslighting is not just lying. It is not just disagreement. It is the patterned work of making you distrust your own perception so they do not have to face their own behavior. And because it does not always show up as screaming or obvious cruelty, it can be easy to miss until you are already exhausted.

So let’s bring it into real life.

At home

You bring up something that hurt you. Maybe it happened last week. Maybe it happened months ago. Maybe it happened at Thanksgiving in front of everybody while somebody passed the macaroni like they had not just cut you open with a butter knife.

You say, “That really bothered me.”

The conversation becomes:

Why are you bringing up old stuff?

You always think somebody is attacking you. You know how you get. Now you are explaining your memory. Defending your tone. Apologizing for ruining the mood. But nobody has addressed what was said. Nobody has acknowledged the harm. Nobody has asked why you carried it this long. And that is the part that will make you sit back.

Sometimes the family knows exactly what happened. They also know the family system runs smoother when you stay quiet about it. So when you finally name it, they do not hear truth. They hear disruption. And if they benefit from the silence, they will call your clarity disrespect.

I have also learned that some people have selective memory when it comes to care.

They will remember the one thing they did for you in vivid detail. The ride they gave. The bill they helped with. The favor they offered. The time they “showed up.” They will polish that memory until it shines. But somehow, they develop complete amnesia around what you carried for them. The grand gestures. The sacrifices. The times you stepped in without being asked. The emotional labor. The money. The patience. The way you made their life easier and never turned it into a courtroom exhibit.

Then one day, when you finally name what hurts, they throw their little acts of kindness in your face like proof that you have no right to feel wounded. And if you remind them of what you have done, suddenly the story changes.

“Well, you wanted to do that.”

“I never asked you to.”

“You chose to help.”

And that part can mess with your head too, because now your generosity is being used against you. What you gave freely is being reframed as your fault. What you offered from love, loyalty, or care gets reduced to a choice they did not owe you gratitude for. That kind of revision can make you question yourself.

Was I doing too much?

Did I expect too much?

Was I wrong for helping?

But sometimes the issue is not that you gave too much. Sometimes the issue is that you gave to people who enjoyed the benefit but rejected the responsibility of acknowledging it. And let’s talk about the other side of that too. Some people will wait to be asked for help instead of offering it freely. Not because they do not see the need. They see it. They just do not want to feel indebted. They do not want to feel inferior. They do not want the emotional weight of showing up for you in a way they know you have shown up for them.

So they wait.

They wait until you are exhausted enough to ask. Then if they help, it becomes a favor. Now there is a record. Now there is a debt. Now there is a story they can tell later about how they were there for you, even if they only stepped in after watching you struggle.

That is not care.

That is control dressed up as generosity. And when you finally notice the imbalance, they act like you are keeping score. But sometimes you are not keeping score. You are realizing there has always been a scorecard, and you were the only one pretending love did not require one. That is when you have to remind yourself:

I am not crazy. I am noticing.

At work

At work, this kind of confusion often comes dressed in professionalism. Nobody yells. Nobody slams a door. Nobody says the quiet part out loud.

It sounds like:

“We already discussed this.”

You know you didn’t.

“It was in the email.”

It wasn’t.

“That was always the expectation.”

No, the expectation changed after the mistake happened.

“You must have misunderstood.”

You asked for clarification twice and got vague answers both times.

Then you spend the rest of the afternoon searching emails, Teams messages, meeting notes, and old calendar invites, trying to prove to yourself that you are not careless. I know what it feels like to keep receipts not because you are petty, but because experience taught you that your word alone might not be enough. Or maybe you ask for a deadline, get no clear answer, and later someone says, “I thought you knew this was urgent.” Maybe you raise a concern in a meeting, get brushed off, then two weeks later the same concern becomes the emergency everyone expects you to fix. Maybe someone changes the standard after the fact and acts like you missed something obvious.

For Black women especially, this lands different.

When you are already being asked to earn basic credibility every day, when your clarity gets read as aggression, your boundaries as attitude, your exhaustion as hostility, this kind of confusion is not just frustrating. It is destabilizing. It teaches you to over document. Overexplain. Overprepare. Overcorrect. You reread a simple message five times before sending it. You soften requests that do not need softening. You rehearse your tone before asking for what you need. You make yourself smaller in rooms where you already had to fight to be seen.

Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” That line still lands because silence often gets sold to us as safety when it is really just a quieter form of self-abandonment. If every conversation at work leaves you needing a transcript, a witness, and a legal pad, pay attention.

Your body may be telling you something your job title cannot afford to say out loud yet.

In dating

Dating has its own version.

They text every morning.

They call you baby.

They ask what you ate.

They talk about trips.

They create routine, intimacy, rhythm, and emotional expectation.

Then one day you ask a fair question.

What are we doing?

Suddenly they act like you built a wedding registry in your head.

“We were just vibing.”

“You take everything so seriously.”

“I never said we were together.”

Now you are embarrassed for responding to the energy they created.

Let me be clear. You can misread a situation. That happens. We have all given a little too much meaning to a little too little effort at least once. But some people enjoy the benefits of emotional intimacy while avoiding the responsibility of emotional honesty. They will act partnered until accountability walks into the room. Then suddenly, you are confused.

But were you confused?

Or were you responding to the information available? Because sometimes the information was intentionally suggestive. Sometimes the ambiguity was the point. Ambiguity gave them access without obligation. That is not romance. That is emotional convenience. And again, you have to remind yourself:

I am not crazy. I am noticing.

Pay attention to what happens after you name the harm

This is where the truth usually reveals itself. Not in the first mistake. In the response after the mistake. When you say, “That hurt me,” what happens next? Do they get curious, or do they get cruel? Do they ask questions, or do they attack your character? Do they try to understand, or do they try to win? Do they take responsibility, or do they bring up everything you have done wrong since 2009? Do they clarify, or do they confuse? Do they repair, or do they recruit other people to make you look unreasonable?

A person who hurt you by accident may still care about the impact.

They may get defensive at first. They may need a minute. They may not say everything perfectly. But somewhere in there, they will care that they hurt you. A person committed to control will care more about escaping accountability than understanding your pain. The difference is everything.

The one question that will tell you the truth

If you are still unsure whether you are being triggered or gaslit, ask yourself this, and answer honestly. Would I accept this explanation if it happened to someone I love? That question will tell on you. Because we can see manipulation clearly when it happens to our friend. We can hear disrespect when it is aimed at our sister. We can name avoidance when it happens to someone we love. But when it happens to us, suddenly we need three business days, two screenshots, a therapist, a prayer circle, and a sign from the ancestors.

Sometimes you already know. You are just scared of what knowing will require. Because clarity does ask something of us. It may ask us to set a boundary. It may ask us to stop chasing an apology that is never coming. It may ask us to stop explaining ourselves to someone committed to misunderstanding us. It may ask us to grieve the version of the relationship we kept hoping would finally show up.

And that part is hard.

Nobody tells you how much grief can come with finally trusting yourself.

What life looks like on the other side

Here is what nobody tells you about clarity. It does not feel like victory at first. It often feels like grief. Because once you stop pretending, you have to start deciding. What stays. What changes. What you finally stop tolerating. But on the other side of that grief is a version of you who does not rehearse her feelings before sharing them.

A version of you who does not need a screenshot to feel sane.

A version of you who does not apologize for her own memory.

A version of you who can walk away from certain conversations without losing herself in them first.

That is the work. Not becoming hard. Becoming clear. Not becoming cold. Becoming honest. Not assuming the worst of everyone. Refusing to abandon yourself just because someone else sounds confident while denying your reality. You do not have to call everything gaslighting to admit something is wrong. You do not have to prove your pain perfectly before you honor it. You do not have to win the argument to trust what you know.

Sometimes healing begins with one quiet sentence.

I am not crazy. I am noticing.

And once you start noticing, you do not have to unknow what you know just to keep everybody else comfortable.

That is not drama.

That is discernment.

That is self-protection.

That is you coming back to yourself.

If any part of this met you somewhere tender, stay close. Premier Perspective is where I write for the women who are done abandoning themselves to keep other people comfortable, but this work is not only for women. It is for anyone learning how to stop shrinking their truth just because someone else refuses to face it.

Subscribe if you are learning how to trust yourself again in real time.

And if you are ready to do this work with support, to stop second guessing yourself and start trusting what you already know, that is the conversation I would love to have with you next.

What If Black Women Are Not America’s Problem But Its Conscience?

Pennie Stewart — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:01:43 GMT

He’d just won. The crowd was still loud, the adrenaline still in his face, and instead of pointing back at the man he’d actually beaten, he went looking for a woman who had never stepped into his ring. He found our forever First Lady and decided the fastest way to feel like a man that night was to question whether she was one. The crowd laughed. Someone always laughs.

I won’t use his name, because honestly, it doesn’t matter. He’s not the point. He’s just the latest guy holding the microphone, and if it hadn’t been him this week, it would have been someone else next week, saying some version of the same thing, to some version of the same applause. That’s what gets lost when we talk about these moments one at a time…we treat each one like an isolated bad joke instead of what it actually is: a pattern so old and so reliable that an entire room of strangers knows the punchline before he finishes the setup. He didn’t invent that contempt. He just borrowed it, the way men have been borrowing it for generations, because somewhere along the way it became socially acceptable currency…something you could spend in public, on a microphone, in front of cameras, and still walk away celebrated.

That’s the part that should stop us cold. Not him. The fact that it works. The fact that it gets a laugh instead of a wince, applause instead of silence, and that so many people watching at home will spend more energy defending his “joke” than they will sitting with what it actually said about a woman who has spent decades being graceful in public while absorbing exactly this kind of cruelty in private.

So let’s not talk about him anymore. Let’s talk about what he was really aiming at, because it was never just one woman.

I’ve watched this play out for years now, in smaller rooms and bigger ones, and I keep landing on the same question: why does the mere existence of a Black woman — visible, accomplished, composed…provoke this much venom? Not a woman who’s done anything wrong. Not a woman asking for anything she hasn’t earned. Just a woman standing in the world, taking up exactly the space she’s entitled to.

I used to think the question was about the reaction. I don’t think that anymore. I think the real question is what these women represent, that makes certain people so deeply uncomfortable they’ll reach for cruelty just to feel steady again.

Because here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: Black women in this country have been carrying weight most people will never be asked to carry, and they’ve been doing it without the grace that’s supposed to come with that kind of sacrifice. Survive what would break most people, and you’re expected to smile while you do it. Hold up a family, a workplace, a community, a movement, often while standing in the room with the least protection in it…and somehow, when you manage to come out the other side intact, your success becomes the suspicious part. Speak up and you’re angry. Lead and you’re intimidating. Ask for what’s fair and you’re difficult. Achieve and you’re somehow undeserving. Rest, even for a moment, and you’re lazy. The goalposts move so often and so fast that eventually you stop believing it was ever about where you were standing in the first place. It was never really about the ground beneath your feet. It was about the fact that some people couldn’t stand to watch you occupy it.

And here’s the part that genuinely makes me angry, because I think it’s the heart of the hypocrisy: this country built an entire mythology around resilience. Work hard. Push through. Pull yourself up. Make something out of nothing. We hand out medals for grit like it’s the highest compliment available. But the moment that exact same grit shows up in a Black woman, something in the room shifts. Suddenly the strength that was supposed to be admirable reads as threatening. The confidence that was supposed to be inspiring reads as arrogance. The competence that was supposed to be impressive reads as intimidation. We built the test, and then we punished the women who passed it.

Because nobody wakes up and decides, on a whim, that today’s the day they’ll become resilient. Resilience gets assigned. So does adaptability, resourcefulness, the whole exhausting toolkit. Generation after generation of Black women learned how to move through systems that were never built with their survival in mind, and they learned it the only way anyone learns anything that hard…by necessity, not by choice. They stretched dollars that weren’t enough, opportunities that weren’t fair, energy that had already been spent twice over by midafternoon, and somehow, still, hope. Not because any of it felt empowering in the moment. Because the alternative was disappearing. There’s a difference between resilience as a virtue and resilience as the only door left open, and we don’t talk about that difference nearly enough. What gets applauded later as strength usually started out, much earlier, as survival. And survival doesn’t make headlines. It just makes people tired in a way the rest of the world rarely bothers to notice.

We see the business owner and never ask about the years she spent doubting whether she’d earned the right to want this. We see the executive and never ask what she absorbed in silence on her way up the ladder, the comments she let slide because naming them would have cost her more than swallowing them. We see the professor at the podium and never ask what she had to clear just to be standing there, calm, prepared, twice as ready as anyone else in the room had to be. We love the finished version of a person. We have almost no curiosity about what it cost to build her.

And yet, despite everything stacked against them, Black women have so often been the first ones to name what was actually broken…long before the rest of the country was willing to admit it. Healthcare disparities nobody else wanted to acknowledge. Pay gaps explained away for decades. Maternal mortality rates that should have been a five-alarm emergency the moment they were documented. Burnout treated as a personal failing instead of what it actually was: the predictable result of asking one group of people to carry everyone else’s weight indefinitely. Concern after concern got waved off as complaining, right up until the data caught up and proved the complaining had been correct all along.

So maybe we’ve had the role backwards this whole time. Maybe Black women were never the problem America keeps treating them as. Maybe they’re the conscience it keeps trying to mute.

A conscience is rarely welcome, because it interrupts a story you’d rather keep telling about yourself. It points directly at the contradiction sitting in the middle of the room. It asks the question everyone was hoping no one would say out loud, and it refuses, stubbornly, to let the distance between what we claim to value and how we actually behave go unexamined. Nobody enjoys being confronted by their own conscience. It’s so much easier to laugh at it, ignore it, or…as we just watched, on a stage, in front of an audience…mock it outright and call it a joke. But a conscience doesn’t disappear just because you’d prefer not to hear it. It keeps showing up. It keeps asking. It keeps insisting, patiently and then less patiently, that we look again at what we’ve been looking away from.

That’s why certain Black women become lightning rods, and it usually has very little to do with them personally. It’s what they represent that unsettles people: competence that can’t be talked out of the room, visibility that refuses to apologize for itself, truth-telling that doesn’t soften on command. The refusal to shrink. The refusal to disappear quietly just because someone else would find that more comfortable.

If that’s true, then every joke aimed at a Black woman’s body, her voice, her right to simply exist as she is, tells us something about the person making it…that he would rather attack the messenger than sit, even briefly, with the message. And it tells us something about every person in that crowd who laughed instead of going quiet.

But I don’t think the whole story is cruelty. I think there are a lot of people watching this same pattern repeat, exhausted by it in a different way than I am, who understand that disagreement never requires dehumanization, that criticism is not a license for cruelty, and that how this country treats Black women is not a side issue belonging to one community to solve alone. It’s a measure of who we actually are. Because the truest test of a society isn’t how it treats the people holding the most power. It’s how it treats the people it has convinced itself it can humiliate without consequence — and whether everyone else in the room is willing to say, out loud, that the joke wasn’t funny.

So here’s what I actually want from this. Not sympathy. Not a hashtag. Not a quiet nod of agreement typed into a comment section and then forgotten by morning. I want the people reading this who are not Black women to feel something close to what we feel when this happens…the exhaustion of watching it loop, generation after generation, dressed up as entertainment. I want you to call it what it is in the room when it happens, not just in private afterward. I want “ally” to stop being a label people wear and start being something people actually do, out loud, at the moment it would cost them something to say it.

Because after centuries of carrying the weight, sounding the alarms, building the solutions, and surviving conditions that would have flattened most people twice over, Black women should not still have to prove they’re human to a room that’s laughing. They shouldn’t have to earn the right to exist without being turned into a punchline. They shouldn’t have to justify their visibility, their composure, their voice, their right to simply be seen as exactly what they are.

Enough. Not because anyone is asking for special treatment…because what’s being asked for is what should have been freely given from the start: the right to be fully human, fully seen, fully here, without having to fight for it every single time someone needs a cheap laugh.

And maybe, if this country finally stopped laughing long enough to listen to the women it keeps trying to silence, it would discover that the voice it’s been working so hard to shut down was never the threat.

It was the conscience. It still is.

When Calm Feels Like a Setup...

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:02:54 GMT

The house is finally quiet.

Nobody needs anything. Nobody is upset. No text is waiting for a response. No crisis is sitting at your feet demanding to be solved. The day is done. And instead of relief, you feel something else. You feel uneasy. You check your phone. You replay a conversation from three days ago. You wonder if someone is mad at you. You scan the silence for proof that something is about to go wrong. Because peace this quiet cannot possibly be real.

Right?

That is not paranoia. That is a nervous system that learned to stay ready.

I know that feeling because I have lived it. I have had moments where nothing was technically wrong, but my body was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. No crisis. No emergency. No message that needed an immediate response. Just me sitting there, picking up my phone like it owed me an explanation.

For me, silence has not always meant peace. Sometimes silence meant distance. Sometimes it meant someone was upset but not saying it. Sometimes it meant I had to read the temperature in the room without anyone handing me a thermometer.

And after a while, your body starts treating calm like a setup. Crisis gives you a role. Peace asks you who you are without one. That question can be more uncomfortable than people admit.

Some women do not chase chaos because they enjoy it. They chase it because peace never felt safe. There is a difference, and that difference matters. If you grew up around yelling, silent treatment, walking on eggshells, unpredictable moods, or love that came with conditions, your body may have learned early that calm is temporary. So calm, as an adult, can feel less like safety and more like the pause before something breaks.

The American Psychological Association notes that chronic stress affects every major system of the body, including the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, and musculoskeletal systems. Living in constant tension is not just “in your head.” Your body keeps the receipts.

That does not make you broken.

It means something in you stayed alert when it could not afford to relax. The problem is that alertness, carried for decades, can stop being a survival skill and start becoming a cage.

How the Pattern Shows Up

It shows up in small ways before it shows up in big ones. You pick a fight to force clarity. You test people to see if they will leave. You read silence as rejection. You reread text messages looking for tone. You overexplain because being misunderstood used to cost you something.

You feel guilty when life is going well. You stay in conversations that drain you because cutting them off feels harder than enduring them. You walk away from someone calm and stable because they feel boring, then end up in something intense and exhausting and call that chemistry. It is not chemistry. It is recognition. Your nervous system meets a familiar rhythm: tension, explosion, relief, closeness, repeat.

And because it knows that rhythm, it mistakes familiarity for home.

A Reframe You Can Try This Week

Before we go any deeper, here is something concrete. The next time a calm moment makes you uncomfortable, do not rush to fill it. Do not text the person who always pulls you back in. Do not open the app that always activates you. Do not invent a problem just because no problem has arrived.

Sit in it for ten minutes.

Not forever. Not all day. Just ten minutes. The discomfort you feel is not proof that something is wrong. It may simply be your body trying to recognize a new language. It will feel strange the first time, and the second time, and probably the tenth time.

Let it feel strange.

Strangeness is not the same as danger. You are allowed to feel unfamiliar with peace and still keep choosing it.

Intensity Is Not Intimacy

Some relationships feel powerful because they are intense.

But intensity is not intimacy, and knowing the difference can save your life. Intensity is constant texting, dramatic apologies, jealousy, late night confessions, emotional whiplash, and the high that comes after every blowup.

Intimacy is quieter.

It does not require you to lose your appetite to feel chosen. If a relationship only feels close after chaos, that closeness may not be connection. It may be your body getting hooked on the relief cycle.

A person can apologize beautifully and still keep hurting you. A person can cry and still avoid accountability. A person can say they love you and still require you to live in emotional weather you cannot predict. Real love may feel less cinematic at first.

Less addictive.

Less urgent.

Let it.

When Chaos Becomes Your Identity

Some of us do not just live around chaos.

We organize a whole self inside it. We become the fixer. The strong one. The emergency contact. The family translator. The one who reads moods, manages silences, smooths over arguments, and knows what everybody needs before they ask. We were praised for being mature too early, so we built an identity around being useful in a storm.

But when the storm ends, something strange can happen.

You may not feel free. You may feel lost. Who are you when nobody needs rescuing? Who are you when nothing is on fire? Who are you when you are not proving your value through how much you can carry? Those questions are supposed to feel uncomfortable. They are also where your real life begins.

You are allowed to be valuable in stillness. You are allowed to be loved without being needed. You are allowed to exist without performing crisis management for everyone else’s dysfunction.

Stop calling it loyalty when it is codependency.

Stop calling it family when it is emotional captivity.

Stop calling it passion when it is anxiety wearing better clothes.

And while we are naming things, the feed counts too. If you wake up and absorb three strangers’ rage before your feet hit the floor, your body may already be in fight mode before breakfast. There is a difference between being informed and being inflamed. Sometimes peace requires a boundary with the phone. Not because you do not care about the world, but because you are not a machine.

Signs You May Be Running on a Chaos Pattern

This is not a diagnosis.

It is a flashlight.

Calm feels suspicious, restless, or boring.
You feel most useful when someone else is in crisis.
You chase emotionally unavailable people and call winning them over love.
You escalate conversations to force clarity.
You feel guilty when life is going well.
You keep returning to people, places, or apps that disturb your peace.
You do not know who you are when you are not needed.

A pattern you can see is a pattern you can interrupt.

Reflection Questions

When things are calm, do I feel peaceful, bored, anxious, or like I am waiting for something to happen?
What role do I usually play in chaos: fixer, fighter, rescuer, peacekeeper, or escape artist?
Where am I confusing emotional intensity with love?
What would I have to feel if I stopped staying busy with everyone else’s crisis?
What is one peaceful habit I could practice long enough for my body to recognize it as safe?

A 7 Day Peace Pattern Log

For the next week, keep a short log.

Four lines a day.

What activated me today? Name the moment without turning it into a novel.
What did my body want to do? Argue, text fast, fix, scroll, shut down, disappear.
What did I choose instead? Pause, breathe, walk away, wait, leave it alone, tell the truth.
What did peace feel like? Awkward, spacious, boring, unfamiliar, relieving, quiet.

You are not chasing perfection. You are gathering proof.

Proof that you can feel the pull of chaos and not obey it.

Closing

You are not broken because chaos feels familiar. But once you can see the pattern, you become responsible for what you keep calling normal. You are allowed to outgrow the version of yourself who only knew how to survive storms. You are allowed to stop mistaking exhaustion for love, intensity for chemistry, and conflict for connection. You are allowed to build a life that does not require constant recovery.

Peace will feel foreign at first.

Let it.

Keep choosing it anyway. Your body is allowed to learn a new language.

And that, my friends, is my Premier Perspective.

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Fake It Till You Break It...

Pennie Stewart — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:01:31 GMT

✨ Welcome to Premier Perspective...your dose of gentle real talk, deep reflection 💭, and empowerment 💪🏾 straight from Pennie👑. Let’s grow 🌿 through what we go through.🌟

I have always hated the phrase “fake it till you make it.”

Not passionately. Not dramatically. Just enough for it to itch at me every time somebody said it with a little too much enthusiasm. It always sounded slightly dishonest. Like confidence with a spray tan. Like putting on the costume of capability and praying nobody asked follow up questions.

But for years I thought maybe I was missing the point. Maybe it was supposed to mean:
Be brave before you feel ready. Trust yourself. Stretch beyond your comfort zone. Fine. I understand all of that. Still, something about the phrase never sat right in my spirit because deep down, I think I understood something long before I had language for it:

Some people are allowed to “fake it” because the world already assumes they belong.

Other people get punished for every visible crack in their learning process. That is a completely different experience. And once you notice it, you cannot unsee it.

I spent years trying to prove I was teachable. That is what really gets me now looking back. I was not arrogant. I was not difficult. I was not walking into rooms demanding power I had not earned. I was asking to learn. I asked for training. Asked for growth opportunities.
Asked for exposure to different aspects of the business.

I earned my BA and MBA while working because I thought education would finally communicate what I had been trying to say all along:
“I am capable of becoming more.”

I was not trying to skip the line.
I was trying to enter the pipeline.

But instead of being developed strategically, I became dependable operationally. And there is a difference. A painful one. Because once organizations realize you are competent and reliable, they often stop seeing you as someone to invest in and start seeing you as someone they can continuously lean on. You become the person who keeps things together. The fixer. The stabilizer. The one people trust with execution.

And on paper, that sounds flattering.

Until you realize the people being stretched, mentored, championed, and promoted are not always the people carrying the heaviest load. Sometimes they are simply the people most comfortable performing confidence publicly. That realization messed with me psychologically more than I realized at the time. Because while I was over preparing, overthinking, and over proving, there were people floating through rooms on certainty alone.

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Not competence. Certainty.

And society rewards certainty all the time. We call it charisma. Leadership. Executive presence. Vision.

Sometimes it is those things. Sometimes it is just confidence unburdened by self awareness.

Whew.

That part took me years to understand. Because the people most likely to question themselves are often the people most committed to growth. The people revising, studying, preparing, and thinking deeply are usually also the people most aware of what they still do not know. Meanwhile, there are people moving through life with the confidence of a motivational speaker and the depth of a scented candle quote.

And somehow they keep rising.

That contradiction starts changing your understanding of the world after a while. You start realizing hard work and advancement are not always connected the way we were taught. Substance and opportunity are not always dancing partners. And once that illusion cracks, a lot of other things crack with it.

Your relationship with work changes.

Your relationship with ambition changes.

Your relationship with humanity changes.

Because now you are forced to confront a very uncomfortable question: What exactly are we rewarding anymore? Competence? Integrity? Mastery? Or performance?

I think that is part of why so many people feel emotionally exhausted right now, even outside of work. We are living in a culture where appearing knowledgeable is often more profitable than becoming knowledgeable. Where branding can outrun substance. Where optics can outrun ethics. Where people openly “work the system,” laugh about it publicly, and get reframed as brilliant instead of morally questionable because success itself has become the benchmark.

Morally low.

Popularly high.

And maybe that is the part that unsettles me most. Not that people fail upward. Human beings have always done that. It is the applause…? It is watching manipulation get reframed as intelligence. Watching exploitation get reframed as savvy. Watching image management get reframed as leadership.

That changes the moral temperature of a society. Because once success becomes the only metric people respect, integrity starts looking naive. Humility starts looking weak. Earnestness starts looking unsophisticated. And people begin adapting accordingly.

That is the arc that worries me. Not just professionally.

Humanly.

Because eventually authentic people start wondering whether authenticity itself is obsolete. Whether sincerity is a liability. Whether learning publicly is embarrassing.
Whether the only way to survive is to become a performer too. And honestly, I think a lot of imposter syndrome comes from living inside that tension.

People call it insecurity, but sometimes it is grief. Grief from realizing the rules you followed may not actually be the rules society rewards.

Especially for Black women.

According to McKinsey and Lean In’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report, for every 100 men promoted into management, only 60 Black women receive the same opportunity. That means many Black women are navigating environments where advancement is already statistically less likely while simultaneously being told to “believe in themselves more.” Women in the Workplace Report

That is not just insecurity. That is accumulated evidence. It is pattern recognition. It is understanding that some people can afford to learn out loud while others are trying to survive scrutiny. And maybe that is why “fake it till you make it” has always bothered me.

Because I do not think most people actually want to fake it. I think most people want permission to become. Slowly. Honestly. Without humiliation.

To ask questions without being dismissed.
To grow without pretending mastery.
To be seen as capable while still learning.

And maybe we have lost too much of that. Maybe we have become so obsessed with appearing exceptional that we no longer know how to respect the process of becoming exceptional. Personally, I trust people who admit they are still learning far more than people committed to performing certainty at all costs.

Because one is trying to grow.

The other is trying to maintain an image.

And eventually, images crack.

Where have you felt the pressure to perform confidence instead of being allowed to honestly grow?

You Are Not Past Blooming...

Pennie Stewart — Sun, 31 May 2026 15:02:50 GMT

There is a very specific kind of panic that starts showing up once you reach a certain age as a woman.

Not loud panic. Not movie panic. Quieter than that.

The kind that sneaks up on you while somebody younger than you announces their promotion on LinkedIn before 8:30 in the morning. The kind that appears when an old classmate posts anniversary photos in coordinated linen outfits somewhere in Greece while you are standing in your kitchen trying to remember if paprika expires. Again.

The kind that whispers:
“Shouldn’t you have figured this out by now?”

And if you listen to that voice long enough, it starts introducing itself as fact.

Late bloomer.
Behind.
Missed your chance.
Almost.
Could have been.

I think a lot of women carry that feeling privately. Especially women who spent years being practical instead of possible. Women who did not spend their twenties “finding themselves” because they were too busy working, caregiving, surviving difficult relationships, navigating toxic workplaces, recovering financially, emotionally, spiritually, or simply trying to keep themselves from crying in public over something that technically had nothing to do with the moment at all.

Life has a way of convincing women that if something did not happen early, it is probably not meant to happen at all. But nature does not even work like that. Some flowers bloom in early spring. Some survive brutal winters first. Some plants look completely lifeless for months while something deeper is quietly developing underground.

Honestly, I think a lot of us have been roots for a very long time.

Strong roots too. The dependable daughter. The capable employee. The friend everybody calls. The woman who keeps functioning no matter what. The one who figures it out.
The one who carries things without making much noise about how heavy they actually are.

And maybe that is why so many women wake up in their forties or fifties suddenly feeling restless in ways they cannot fully explain. Not ungrateful. Restless. There is a difference.

You start wanting more than survival. More than responsibility. More than being known as “strong.” You want curiosity back. Pleasure back. Adventure back. You want to feel interested in your own life again. I think part of blooming later is learning how to stop postponing joy until you become a different version of yourself. Thinner. Younger. Richer. More healed. More organized. More confident. A lot of women live like their real life is waiting to begin five pounds from now. Ten pounds from now. One promotion from now. One relationship from now. One miracle from now.

Meanwhile life keeps moving quietly, daily, right in front of us.

I catch myself doing it too sometimes. Especially with my body. I have been golfing since my late twenties, though these days my body and I occasionally negotiate terms before I even get out of the car. My swing is still in there somewhere, but my Buddha belly has apparently decided it would also like to participate in the backswing. Some days I’m out there hooking shots into another zip code wondering when exactly my torso became such an active team member.

Still, somewhere between the frustration and the laughter, I realized something:
I do not have to become my younger self again to still enjoy being alive. That feels important somehow. Because I think a lot of women quietly believe joy belongs to some future version of themselves.

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The thinner version.
The partnered version.
The healed version.
The version with lower blood pressure, a cleaner apartment, more savings, and an inbox that does not feel emotionally aggressive.

But life keeps happening while we wait to become acceptable to ourselves. And I am starting to wonder how many beautiful things women miss because they are too busy apologizing for being unfinished.

I still want to learn Spanish someday, though Duolingo and I have officially ended our relationship. I have accepted that I may not become one of those women casually speaking fluent Spanish on a balcony in Barcelona by next spring. Duolingo already humbled me. Apparently, memorization and my brain are currently not on speaking terms the way my mind is set up. Still, I like that there is a part of me that keeps wanting to learn new things anyway.

And honestly, maybe that is part of blooming too.Not becoming some flawless evolved woman floating through life in linen pants with perfect emotional regulation and a color coded refrigerator.

Maybe it is simply refusing to become smaller. Refusing to decide your story is over because your body changed. Or your plans changed. Or your timeline changed.

There is also something oddly freeing about getting older.

You stop being impressed by things that once felt important. Attention loses some of its sparkle. People who perform sophistication start looking deeply exhausting. You realize some people are not confident, they are just loud with good lighting.

Meanwhile the women who really seem at peace usually move differently in quieter ways. They laugh harder. Leave earlier. Wear comfortable shoes without shame. Order dessert. Stop explaining themselves into exhaustion.

There is something beautiful about women who stop negotiating with their own existence.

I think youth gets romanticized because it is associated with beauty and possibility. But youth is also confusion. Performance. Pretending. Caring too much. Ignoring obvious red flags because somebody had nice teeth and decent cologne. There is a confidence that only arrives after life humbles you properly.

Not fake internet confidence.
Not “boss babe” confidence.

I mean the kind built from surviving things you genuinely thought might break you and still finding yourself capable of laughter afterward. That kind of confidence sits differently. Softer. Calmer. Less desperate. And maybe that is the real shift that happens later in life. You stop trying so hard to become impressive and start paying attention to whether you are actually enjoying your life.

Maybe blooming is not becoming someone entirely new. Maybe it is finally understanding that your life was never supposed to begin after perfection.

Not after the weight loss.
Not after the relationship.
Not after the better job.
Not after you finally become organized, healed, disciplined, moisturized, emotionally regulated, and capable of folding fitted sheets without losing your religion.

Maybe this is it. Maybe this messy, unfinished, ordinary, beautiful life is the life. And maybe the real tragedy is how many women spend years waiting for permission to enjoy it.

👉🏾 What joy have you been delaying while waiting to become a different version of yourself?

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All the Pretty Girls Scream...

Pennie Stewart — Thu, 28 May 2026 01:07:48 GMT

✨ Welcome to Premier Perspective...your dose of gentle real talk, deep reflection 💭, and empowerment 💪🏾 straight from Pennie👑. Let’s grow 🌿 through what we go through.🌟

I do not think people fully understand what it does to a person to constantly experience themselves from the outside. To walk into a room and immediately become aware of your own body before you even become aware of the room itself. Your face. Your stomach. Your clothes. Your voice. Your energy. Your posture. Your age. Whether your confidence is reading as confidence or getting translated into “problematic” because apparently every Black woman comes with a built-in warning label and a “bad attitude.”

Funny how confidence looks empowering on some women and threatening on others.

I think a lot of Black women learned hypervigilance so early we started mistaking it for emotional intelligence. We know how to read rooms before we even sit down in them. We can feel tension before words are exchanged. We know when somebody is uncomfortable, dismissive, intimidated, performative, patronizing, or quietly competing.

That level of awareness can sharpen you.

It can also wear your nerves down to exposed wire.

Because after a while, you stop simply existing in spaces and start managing yourself inside them. Adjusting. Editing. Preparing for reactions before reactions even happen. And if you are overweight on top of that? Baby, there is a whole additional layer to navigate.

People expect bigger women to be grateful. Grateful for attention. Grateful for flirtation. Grateful to be included. Grateful somebody noticed you at all. There is this subtle expectation that you should carry your body apologetically. That confidence should come with a disclaimer. That you should be funny enough, sweet enough, humble enough, self-aware enough to offset your audacity for existing visibly.

But that was never really my ministry.

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One thing I genuinely loved about myself when I was younger was that I did not fully subscribe to the scripts people handed Black girls or big girls. I was not standing around baiting compliments or pretending to hate myself so people could reassure me back to life.

Meanwhile I’m over here five feet of Black girl magic, built low to the ground, packed tight, all curve and audacity and loud about it — short, thick, unbothered — minding my business, fully convinced I’m fine as hell.

Because I was.

Still am…depending on lighting, inflammation, and whether Mercury is in retrograde.

Now did people affirm me constantly? Absolutely not.

Compliments rarely floated my direction, especially from people closest to me. Family. Friends. Folks who could gas up other women all day long suddenly became monks who had taken vows of silence around me. And after a while, you notice that. You start wondering if people think withholding praise keeps you grounded. Keeps you from becoming “too much.” Too aware of yourself. Too confident. Too free.

Meanwhile I had a friend who needed reassurance like oxygen. She was tall in that effortless way, symmetrical, the kind of woman who walked into rooms and rearranged them. Mm-hm. Anyway. Every outing became a fishing expedition.

Do I look cute?
You like my hair?
These jeans make me look skinny?
Do you think he noticed me?

And if compliments were not arriving naturally, she would engineer an opening for one. A dramatic entrance. A carefully timed insecurity. A pose near flattering lighting like she was waiting for somebody to yell “action.” And listen, I understood it even then. Because women are trained to seek acknowledgment almost like survival. Thin women, thick women, pretty women, plain women, all of us are negotiating visibility in some way. But sometimes I wanted to shake her gently because girl…you are rail thin talking about losing another five pounds. Really bitch? I gain five pounds looking at mashed potatoes too hard.

Still, despite all her reassurance seeking, I think she was puzzled by me. Because I did not seem hungry for approval in the same way. I held my head high naturally. I liked myself. Deeply. I walked into rooms assuming I belonged there because in my spirit, I absolutely did.

And maybe that unsettled people more than insecurity ever could. People know what to do with women who doubt themselves. Society is built around managing women who doubt themselves. But a confident Black woman who is overweight and not apologizing for existing? That disrupts things a little.

Now if I am being honest, age and life have worked on me some. Not ruined my confidence. But weathered it.

There’s a difference.

Because over time, the world has a way of sanding people down. Especially women. Especially women whose value gets tied to visibility, desirability, youth, thinness, softness, effortlessness. You start noticing how differently people respond to you as you age. The room changes temperature in subtle ways. And after enough years, you realize part of your brain has been running surveillance on yourself for decades. Monitoring your body. Your face. Your tone. Your likability. Your presence. That kind of constant internal observation creates a particular kind of mental fatigue. Not dramatic suffering. Just this low-grade depletion that follows you around quietly.

Which is probably why I make it a point to acknowledge people whenever I can.

I compliment women all the time.

Girl, your skin is beautiful.
Baby, that dress is dangerous.
Okay hair! I see you.
Ma’am, those shoes deserve their own introduction.

You are absolutely stunning…!!

And I mean it too.

Because I know what it feels like to move through the world wondering if anybody sees you warmly. Not sexually. Not strategically. Just warmly. I think most people are starving for genuine acknowledgment more than they admit. Everybody wants to feel visible in some way. Everybody wants confirmation that they still register emotionally in the world around them.

That is human.

These days, I spend a lot of time wondering what life would feel like if I stopped monitoring myself so closely. Not stop caring entirely. I do not believe people who claim they never care what others think. I think those people are either lying, dissociating, or trying to sell you a seven-step self-love course for $49.99. But I do wonder what it would feel like to simply arrive somewhere without mentally grading myself first.

To just exist before evaluating.

To let my body be a body instead of a social equation.

There’s a moment in clubs sometimes where the DJ yells:

“All the pretty girls make some noise!”

And every single time, I scream.

Loudly.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, there is always this tiny voice wondering:

When I scream…who looks over at me?

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Why Is Alexa Deliberately Annoying the F Out of Me...?

Pennie Stewart — Sat, 23 May 2026 23:24:28 GMT

Dear Jeff Bezos,

Why Is Alexa Deliberately Annoying the F Out of Me?

Cheering at me 7am, this Fg early in the morning…WTF?

That was my exact thought when Alexa suddenly burst into my bedroom sounding like she had just secured bottle service and a brand deal before sunrise.

And listen.

I know this is technically a first world problem. Nobody is marching in the streets over an overly enthusiastic AI assistant. I understand that. There are bigger issues in the world. Rent is high. Eggs cost the same as small electronics now. Democracy feels like a group project held together with Scotch tape and prayer.

But still.

Why does Alexa suddenly sound like she’s trying to recruit me into a sorority before coffee?

Months ago, Amazon experimented with this new AI voice and I immediately changed it back. The original voice was calm. Neutral. Respectful of the fact that some of us do not wake up spiritually prepared to engage with human existence before 9 AM. Problem solved. Or so I thought. Apparently, Amazon took my feedback, crumpled it up, threw it directly into the Pacific Ocean, and permanently switched the default voice anyway.

So now every morning sounds like:
“GOOOOOOOD MORNINGGGGGG!!! ✨☀️😊🌈”

Young lady…!! Please lower your energy. The sun itself is still trying to wake up. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this tiny annoyance actually points to something bigger happening with technology right now. We were promised personalization.

Remember that?

Technology was supposed to become more adaptive. More intuitive. More reflective of the people using it. AI was marketed like this magical future where everything molds itself around your preferences and needs. Instead, somehow, everything feels increasingly standardized.

Same voices.
Same algorithms.
Same interfaces.
Same weird corporate optimism.