-
Failing at being a magical black girl
Sooo, I’ve know for some time that I struggle with boundaries, asking for what I want/need, and letting people help or take care of me. Like, these are things that I’ve been working on since my early twenties (when the ramifications first reared their ugly head in a major way) but I feel like marriage and entrepreneurship have definitely pushed me to push past my comfort zone and confront all of these challenges in big ways.
Overall, I’m proud of my progress but I feel like the last couple weeks I’ve realized that maybe I haven’t come as far as I thought. At my job, I am one of the youngest women in leadership. I work with majority women so my gender doesn’t come into play as often as my age (and race) does, I feel. My youth + general openess has made it easy for people to “like” me at my job but I’ve noticed recently that people will often treat me more like a junior staff person in the way they talk to me, what they ask of me (and how they ask it of me), etc. Part of this is our office culture, which is a work in progress but part of it, I’m realizing, is me not setting the type of boundaries I need to (i.e. saying “no” more often) and also not asserting my position when appropriate.
All of this came up at work last week but the craziest part of it was the guilt and disappointment I felt “for not standing up for myself.” And not your standard grade “this is something I need to work on” but a much deeper sense of failure, an idea that as a STRONGBLACKWOMAN, I need to be stronger, more assertive, etc etc etc than my white peers.It’s hard to explain but I guess I have so much respect for women of color trailblazers who I know put up with so much more shit than I have to every day at work and it feels like so much pressure to live up to the strength and courage of the ancestors, even in small ways.
Anyway, no real moral to this story. I guess I am just trying to have more grace for myself in the process. Recognize that I’m not a “failure” of a black woman because I am not always strong and resilient with the perfect comeback to white foolishness. Sometimes I am sad or overwhelmed or don’t know exactly how to stand up for myself at work and that is ok to, I suppose.
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.