I love being a Black woman. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
But one of the things that I find so irritating moving through this world (ahem, country) as a woman of color is how fucking overqualified we have to be in order to move forward sometimes.
While I am so excited to see history being made with the record number of women of color being elected to office, watching candidates like Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum lose, when it was so clear that they were more than qualified to do the job annoyed me.
Watching them lose to opponents who were equally terrible just pissed me off.
How often have you faced that in your own life?
Those times when you’re the backbone of your team at work, but your teammate somehow gets all the credit.
Or when you know you’re one of the best in your industry, but for some reason you never make those top 10 experts you should listen to right now lists…. (you know the ones, the ones that are mysteriously always filled with the same white men.)
It’s infuriating.
So what can we do?
I firmly believe situations like this are why it’s so important for us to continue creating the communities of support that we need for ourselves.
Just existing as a woman of color in this world is exhausting. And, if we’re not careful, we can allow that anger and annoyance and fury and dismay (all righteous, I might add) to take us over.
We need to continue lifting one another up.
We need to continue supporting each other fervently.
We need a place to come home to and exhale.
We need to keep encouraging each other to take that break for self care (you ok, sis?).
It’s why I’m so adamant about women of color creating unapologetic, joyful lives.
We need to feel that joy so that we can continue to go out into the world and set it on fire with our magic.
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