I Am A Black Woman

Time has definitely been the biggest factor in teaching me what it means to be a black woman in this world, and more importantly, how to embrace and advocate for my identity.

There was a time in my life that I felt the need to “quiet down” my hairstyles, artistic taste, and overall black culture in the workplace where white employees were the majority. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to avoid awkward compliments and questions about my sew-ins and braids. I wanted to avoid the awkward moment when I was the only one that knew what black musician was playing over the speakers. I wanted to avoid the seemingly awkward difference in how we spent our time outside of work.

In recent years, I challenged my flawed thinking. Why was I hiding myself? More specifically, why was I hiding myself from white individuals? I never came up with a concrete answer, but I did come to the conclusion that there was no shame in being me no matter my environment or audience. I am a black woman and nothing can change that (not that I want to). I simply needed to embrace my identity without worrying about how it made someone else feel. If wearing my waist-length box braids to work bothered someone, that was their problem to navigate, not mine.

There is so much beauty in individuality and rich culture and even more in respecting one another’s. Enjoy your art, your experience, your pastime, your self-expression and who you are to the core. Loving who you are and all that makes you, including those who came before you, is what truly makes a person beautiful and capable of extending that same love to others.

Embracing and nurturing the black woman that I am has helped me to be confident, to respect myself, to advocate for my history, to support my community, to fight for the generations to come after me and to never let others intimidate me into being anything less than the BLACK WOMAN that God created me to be.

I challenge you, of any race, to embrace who you are and where you come from every second of every day. Watch it change you for the better.

xoxoxo,
DASH