Without Erasure

I’ve been thinking about the woman I’ve become and how intentional she is.

I didn’t wake up confident.

I earned it.

Confidence came from surviving moments that tried to reduce me. From realizing that no one was coming to save me, soften the blow, or explain my worth on my behalf. I learned to speak plainly because being misunderstood was more painful than being disliked. I learned audacity because silence never protected me.

I stopped asking for permission when I realized I was already capable.

I stopped waiting to be chosen when I understood I could choose myself.

My freedom of being didn’t come from rebellion. It came from exhaustion.

From trying to fit into boxes that never fit me. From performing versions of myself that were easier to digest but harder to live with. From realizing that authenticity was not a luxury but a necessity if I wanted peace.

I let myself evolve. I let myself contradict earlier versions of me. I let myself be spiritual and sensual, disciplined and expansive, rooted and curious. I stopped explaining why I move the way I do.

I also had to unlearn the idea that refinement requires distance from Blackness. I watched how comfort in Black language, cadence, and expression was framed as something that needed correcting. How ease was mistaken for lack of ambition. How professionalism was conflated with proximity to whiteness. I saw how women who refused to code-switch their spirit were treated as if they were less evolved.

That never sat right with me.

Because intelligence has never had one sound. Depth has never required erasure. Growth does not demand abandonment of self.

So my confidence is not about sounding a certain way. My freedom is not about fitting a mold. I carry my Blackness whole. I don’t edit it to be palatable or package it to be impressive. I honor it as intelligence, as lineage, as knowing.

I also learned that being the center of my life doesn’t make me selfish. It makes me responsible.

I reflect. I narrate. I hold myself accountable for the patterns I repeat and the standards I set. I don’t disappear inside relationships or careers. I don’t outsource meaning. I stay present with my interior world because that is where my decisions are born. What I embody now is integration.

Confidence without chaos.

Freedom without avoidance.

Depth without self-betrayal.

I am not trying to be anyone else’s version of womanhood. I am not interested in shrinking for harmony or softening for approval. I want partnership without erasure. Love without performance. A life that feels as good on the inside as it looks from the outside.

This version of me came from doing the work. From grief. From discernment. From choosing truth over comfort again and again.

I am no longer becoming.

I am here.

And I am her.