International Women's Day: A Self-Revolution

When women become uninhibited by society’s expectations they live in their power. To love yourself, know yourself, trust yourself, and forgive yourself despite the long standing institutions, social constructs, and generational cycles as a Black woman is a self-revolution.

I’ve always admired Black women who were authentically themselves by not allowing the expectations of others to determine their value. After decades of feeling disconnected from who I was and who I wanted to be, being unfulfilled in my relationships, and twisting myself to fit in I purposefully sought on a personal journey to discover my authentic self.

I started my self-revolution with four lines:

I love myself

I know myself

I trust myself

I forgive myself

At the time I didn’t believe these words but they became the mantra I repeated every day for two or three years as I walked into work, battled feelings of anxiousness, and self-doubt.

IDENTITY CRISES

When you are immersed in a predominately white culture there is an assimilation process that occurs over time but what you’re unaware of is the price paid is your authenticity. For those of us who grow up in communities, attending school, and trying to fit in with people who are non-Black we experience feelings of being disconnected from our peers because our full existence is not seen and our experiences are often invalidated through micro-aggressions and gendered anti-Blackness.  But over time we learn most of the people we call friends, coworkers, and acquaintances would never see us and most would choose not because they do not understand themselves.

On the outside I seemed put together but on the inside I was screaming while simultaneously burying emotions that felt too painful to process. But I wanted to feel solid in my identity, free from the labels and ideas placed on me since I was a small girl. I wanted to trust myself in my decisions. I wanted to forgive myself for things that happened to me, for the choices I made. And I wanted to love myself as I was in the present.

TIME AND SPACE

In order to find ourselves we need time and space to make room for a self-evolution. As the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic swelled, I found myself alone in isolation except for FaceTime and Zoom gatherings. I missed socialization, my family and friends, and the memories of living more care-free as all of our lives came to a slow crawl forcing us to spend time alone or secluded with our household. Many of us watched the death toll numbers rise while large pockets of our community refused to engage in basic humanity.

The halt of a schedule that was on rinse and repeat provided time and space to cease running from myself and confront internal and external issues with a fine tooth comb. Instead of waking up mentally preparing to go into the workplace surrounded by people for eight hours a day, I spent time processing thoughts and emotions I’d otherwise push aside.

Over time I didn’t feel the need to put on my armor and prepare to be another version of myself that was more acceptable. I was no longer immersed in a culture that didn’t look like me for the majority of the day, week, and month creating space to discover parts of myself I always knew existed but didn’t allow to rise to the surface. For the first time, I stopped caring about assimilating and stopped worrying about how I would be received. I adorned my head with braids to mirror the sense of pride felt in my being as a Black woman and my core began to fill with wholeness pulsing self-love and self-acceptance. I was shedding the woman who I was before, the one who was indecisive, didn’t set boundaries, and went against my intuition.

LETTING GO

Demolishing the expectations Black women internalize is a releasing of historical, generational, social, and institutional layers. I stopped changing the way I spoke to be similar to my co-workers, letting the natural inflections of my voice flow. Instead of trying to be polite I became more direct and didn’t water down my expressiveness. I let go of the need to be perfect; with my body, in my work, for my relationships because all the years spent striving for perfection made me miserable and question everything I did or said.

Then the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd changed everything. I spent the last decade developing relationships with people while not being true to myself and ultimately paid the price of spending that time feeling unseen. After recovering from the devastation of Black lives lost, I made a promise to myself; to quit doing what was expected of me like showing up for people wanting me to pour into their cups but not knowing how to pour into mine. It became a requirement of mine for the people I have in my life to be boldly anti-white supremacy because anything less would be detrimental to my existence.

I knew what didn’t serve me and who wasn’t for me anymore, proceeding unapologetically to speak out and start a virtual support group for Black women like me needing a space to be free. My relationships with the Black women in my life became life lines from 1:00am phone calls to cry, express our grief, and unleash fiery anger to boisterous laughter and Black girl brunch in the park. But through the pain we held on to each other because as Black women we’re the only ones who can understand the depths of our experiences and the tenderness of our souls.

The unbridled power of being a Black woman rose to the surface because we carry not only the wisdom we learn in this lifetime but the resilience of the Black women before us, the ones who survived in order for us to exist today. And we also carry their trauma so it’s not just our own lives we are living but it’s a continuation of their life; a continuation of their joy, their pain, their suffering, their hopes, and dreams. I didn’t want to be another Black woman who buried her pain. I didn’t want to continue allowing this world to chip away at my being while grinning and smiling so I ran towards healing, towards self-soothing, and nurtured my inner-child, the little girl who needed to be accepted for who she is right now.

Full Circle

Achieving a higher level of self-love in a real, accepting, and forgiving way changed my life. Building my community around Black women gave me a larger sense of existence even when that existence continuously comes with violence. Being expected to bear the emotional labor of others while wounded is not a Black woman’s journey and it does not make us strong. Knowing ourselves, recognizing the things we can and cannot change, giving energy to the spaces and people who fill us up, being cherished, honored, and respected is what makes us strong.

Continuing to find hope and joy and peace in this world is what makes us strong.

We bleed, cry, we’re unsure of ourselves at times.

We are bold and direct, we are quiet and observant, we have emotions, and want love.

We make mistakes and overcome them. Sometimes we’re afraid and other times we are fearless.

I didn’t ask for this journey or this body or this skin. I didn’t get to negotiate the terms of my existence before I was made. But I am here, still standing, still alive, still hoping for hope. And the work, the pain, and sleepless nights endured helped shed the remaining old skin of self-doubt and fear.

At the end of each year, I reflect on the totality of my yearly experiences. It was December 23rd, the night before my 33rd birthday when I poured my thoughts on paper. The words I wrote down were “I feel like I really know myself, I trust myself and my instincts, I forgive myself for the mistakes or the things I’ve been holding on to, and I love myself for who I am right now” and I started to tear up because those words came true:

I love myself

I know myself

I trust myself

I forgive myself

The four lines I repeated to provide enough strength to enter into homogeneous spaces, to calm my nerves, and work through self-doubt became true. To achieve self-love in a world that tells Black women to loathe ourselves, I had to break, I had to go through internal depths of healing to understand we are living in an impossible world. The resilience is in the will to keep imagining a better world not for ourselves, not for our children but for their children, for the little Black girls and boys who will have to exist in this world and the generations after us.

My internal change was not only for my personal development but was so I could do something meaningful in the world and for my community. Choosing to challenge everything I was taught, believed in, or held on too led to a path where the ending is unknowable but my confidence in how I will move through life comes from a place beyond me, it’s spiritual, it’s connected, and like so many Black women it fuels me to want more for myself, my community, for women, for all Black Women.

This was my self-revolution. Loving myself. Knowing myself. Trusting myself. Forgiving myself. What is your self-revolution? How will you begin? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Edit June 2021: This article was adapted from a virtual International Women’s Day celebration in Boise, Idaho. Click here to view the reading at 01:53:00.

Want additional stories of Black women creating a self-revolution? Watch Denise Francis’ Ted Talk, THE POWER OF THE BLACK WOMAN’S SELF LOVE JOURNEY.