A liberating hack for redefining strength as a black woman

Challenge: Describe Black Women without using the word “strong”.

I saw this post a few years ago and it struck me so deeply. While I identify as and embrace being a strong black woman, this label hasn’t always fit quite right.

I’m curled up on the couch, with my blanket pulled over my head, ready to never ever come out….

Cuz sometimes it’s just too much.

It feels like everything is way too broken for you to try to fix.

This OG 1960s activist swears by this for personal liberation…

Your most radical act of protest may be between the sheets...

Your most revolutionary act of protest may be between the sheets…

It’s easy to think that your political power only exists in the voting booth…

Or if you’re out protesting in the streets…

Or if you call your senator…

In a 500-person graduating high school class, there were all of three black people. Two of whom were my sisters, who are twins, and the other was a black guy who only dates white girls. 
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For so many of us, having the experience of being the ONLY one, or one of very, very few black faces is sadly super common.

The black reclamation you need to authentically shine in white spaces

Anyone exhausted from working twice as hard will love this relieving practice...

Right at the base of my neck... Right where the very tips of my shoulder blades almost touch... That’s where a certain type of tension lives. 
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I feel it flare up when my white manager uses everyone’s "spirit animal" as an icebreaker exercise (as if Native Americans' sacred religious deities are a fun, silly game for white people to play).

“How do you know your grandmother wasn’t depressed?” 

My friend was struggling with postpartum after her first child was born.

She was sharing with me how she was beating herself up in therapy, comparing herself to her grandmother who had 7 kids and worked as a sharecropper (aka slavery by another name).

Here’s how you can actually cultivate vulnerability in an unsafe world

3 Mind blowing ways to think with ALL your Brains

I may or may not have thrown Co-dependent No More across the room.
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No disrespect to all my self-help book 📕 loving peeps out there, (I still love a good self-help book myself from time to time) but that shit never worked for me.

Sometimes Vision Boards just don’t cut it.

And I say that as someone with at least 3 different vision boards. 

Don’t get me wrong, I've been to many a vision board party.

This epic pleasure practice is way better than normal vision boarding

This is one of the most powerful ways to get mentored by ANYONE

I never thought I would be mentored by Oprah… until it happened. 

Yeah, it happened.

And I mean more than just the time I saw her when she came to my college and gave a speech.

When I say I help black women go from bitter and badass, the natural first question is how? 

 I get it.

Tons of people have catchy slogans, but the “creating lasting change part”… that’s normally when things get sketchy.

The energizing practice anyone struggling to learn from rage will cherish

This one shift is a game charger for learning to leverage your anger

How many times can I be brought to tears of gratitude and awe at the compassion and kindness shown to me?

That’s one of the 2022 questions I wrote out for myself. 

Growing up being told that I will have to work twice as hard to get half as much… that message sunk into my joints and deep into my fingernails. As if there’s pride in working constantly, not spending time with family and friends… all to prove you’re good enough to people who will never see you as such.

One of the most underused alchemy tools is at your fingertips

This 3 step process Is a Dynamic Way to cultivate your own unstoppable power

“Some of us know / we have never felt safe” Lucille Clifton spoke this truth after 9/11. When for the first time in many of their lives white people were experiencing a level of fear for their personal safety that black and brown Americans have carried in their DNA  for centuries.

Freshly baked chocolate chip pecan pumpkin bread. It doesn’t get better than that. Whenever that smell fills my home, I’m transported from my eye rolling sighs of petty ass coworkers, into essentially heaven on earth. Because let’s be real, if heaven doesn’t include unlimited pumpkin bread… then it’s a hard pass for me.

Smells Delicious: learn one of the most powerful ways to alchemize

Reclaiming your power after being followed around a store

I could feel their eyes following me everywhere I went… I remember a friend and I being blatantly followed around a store. Because of course as two young, black women we were there to steal something. I remember how tense my entire body felt. This stiffness in the back of my neck knowing the racist store clerk was right behind me all the time.

I spent years constantly running late (or just barely making it), bumping into things, stubbing my toe, and always feeling like I was behind.

I would see people who showed up to meetings or dates looking incredible and so calm and in charge like they never tried to do their lipstick in the rear-view mirror during bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I’m constantly being complimented on this, here’s my trick...

Doing THIS gave me a authentic confident power for the first time

“The way you orgasm is the way you do everything in life.” 

I remember the shock and instant freeze that momentarily paralyzed me when a teacher told me this.

…But turns out she was right.

Here’s the unlikely source of the best advice I’ve received in 10 years…

I spent many a year circling in loops of rolling my eyes on calls at ignorant things my coworkers said, knowing my current role was as restricting as the elastic band work wig I threw on before video calls.

Here’s how you can actually get deep drive and clarity from your rage

One powerful tool to not get thrown off by microaggressions

Wait did she really just say that? 

Yeah, you know those moments when you have to double check your hearing and your short-term memory. It continues to amaze how bold co-workers, acquaintances and even random people on the street are.

Escaping a fundamentalist Christian cult isn’t really something I really talk about on Insta.

There’s a lot of pain, family of origin wounding, and trauma healing I’m still working through on a regular basis right now. Trust there’s a well spring of anger, hurt and rage that I’m alchemizing and repurposing into the incredible powerful, trauma-informed spaces that my clients tell me is unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before.

The key you need to authentically thrive in the whiteness of spaces

5-step process if you’re in serious need of alchemizing your psychic burden

Here’s how you can show up powerfully in a disempowering world

Here’s how you can actually have authentic confident according to Maya Angelo

Here’s the missing perspective That Will Make You unshakably powerful

This is my go to support after being denied entrance somewhere