THE POWER OF THE BLACK WOMANS SELF LOVE JOURNEY
[Music]
[Music]
if all black women started a self-love
journey
we could heal generations
black women did you know you can heal
did you know you can feel
did you know you can cry and completely
surrender to the tears that are falling
out of your eyes
did you know that the trauma and pain
that you’ve experienced isn’t
essentially normal it’s just been
normalized
did you know you don’t always have to be
strong push through and carry on but
most importantly
did you know that you are not alone
because i didn’t
i didn’t know it was okay to not be okay
i didn’t know i can cry and be
vulnerable and neither of them makes me
weak
i didn’t know i didn’t have to always
have it together i didn’t always have to
have my life together know what i was
doing i didn’t know i can go to church
and therapy
at the same time i worry that if i did
this that the strong black woman trophy
would be taken away from me
but does it even belong to me
see i didn’t know that the strong black
woman
is the healed black woman but i do now
growing up i looked up to the woman in
my family
they were like superheroes to me
they were beautiful independent and
strong
when i grew up i wanted to be just like
them
i wanted to be a strong black woman
the whole idea of the strong black woman
seemed like a character in a folk tale
to me
she was the unspoken rule the
requirement
the expectation she wasn’t personified
just into one woman she seemed all too
familiar to me almost as if she was
family
her mannerisms echoed the pain and
trauma
of her ancestors and her self-silencing
behavior
became almost second nature to me
the ways of a strong black woman was
never directly taught to me
it was shown to me through the behavior
and actions of my mothers
grandmothers and family
the strong black woman trope hurts black
women more than
it helps them it tells them that
they should be strong and resilient but
doesn’t allow them to engage in the
behaviors needed
to preserve their strength and
resilience
if all black women started a self-love
journey
we could heal generations
you may be thinking to yourself how can
something so simple
as self-love have the potential to
heal black women and possibly even their
culture
well the answer to that actually lies
within the definition itself
dr autumn griffin defined self-love as
the will to protect nurture
preserve and celebrate
one’s emotional physical
spiritual and mental health
self-love goes against all that the
strong black woman is supposed to be
where the strong black woman trope says
to be selfless
self-love says to be selfish
where the strong black woman trope says
show no emotion
self love says explore them
and where the strong black woman trope
says we don’t have time
for mental health self love says
make time self-love follows the
hierarchy of cognition
reconstructing our thoughts will then
influence the way that we feel
which will then influence the way that
we behave
and eventually that will change the way
that we treat ourselves
for black women this is essentially
simple
because the only thing that the strong
black woman is allowed to be is strong
she’s expected to push things under the
rug hide her trauma suffer in silence
so this isn’t simple
there’s so much that we have to learn
and so much more that we have to unlearn
but lucky for us self-love is a skill
and with enough practice it can become a
learned
behavior and if mastered
it could be the one missing preventative
measure to fight against
common mental health issues within the
black community
no longer do we need to suffer in
silence with our mental health and
traumas
we can begin to heal them
self-love teaches us how to protect our
mental health
it also teaches us how to preserve it
imagine if we all did this imagine the
change
it will cause
self-love has the power to change our
culture
because as our daughters watch us learn
how to heal
they will learn as well
and eventually it will be normalized as
it is repeated
into our culture because what is culture
if not behaviors
passed down from generation to
generation
it will be passed down from her
daughters to
her daughter’s daughters to her sisters
to her grandmas until it is eventually
taken
and adopted as culture the same way the
strong black
woman trope that silenced us for years
has
we could finally fight against the
common mental health issues that black
women face
by healing the trauma that has been
silenced
by the strong black woman trope
it’s almost as if every time i try to be
anything but resilient
i hear the strong black woman almost
like an elder whispering to me
if i can make it through slavery then
you can make it through anything
so hush it up suck it up push through
pull it together people are depending on
you carry on
i listen as she silences and invalidates
me
if all black women started a self-love
journey we could heal
generations
i would like to share with you my
journey
but first hi my name is denise
i am the founder and ceo of the self
love organization
a wellness club for women of color to
prioritize self-love
and mental health to finally end the
cycle
of transgenerational trauma
i have been on my self-love journey for
10
years but my story starts at age 9.
i’m at my grandmother’s house
all the lights are off downstairs except
for one ambered light
we’re all in the living room and in that
room stands
my mother father grandparents
and me and for a reason i am way too
young to understand
everyone is screaming everyone is upset
jamaican patois is being flown around
the room at a speed that i cannot
comprehend i try to keep up looking left
and right
my head begins to feel like it’s
spinning my heart is pounding my
palms are sweaty i feel weak and tense
all at the same time
their thoughts are echoing in my mind
i close my eyes and by time i can open
it
i’ve ran into the bathroom sitting on
the bathroom floor
next to the cold sink the draft from
underneath the door is
brushing against my bare feet and tears
are running down in my nightgown
and my hands are over my ears and all i
remember is myself repeating
and asking myself what did i do wrong
what what could i have possibly done
the funny part is i’m pretty sure it had
nothing to do with me
but that overwhelming feeling
was there and it was in that moment
that my self-silencing behaviors began
in that moment a nine-year-old crying
clearly and distressed girl decided to
be a strong black woman
i’ve never seen any of the woman in my
family cry
no one has ever acted like this before
something must be wrong with me
so that’s what i did as i started to
hear the footsteps of my family coming
towards the bathroom door i quickly
wiped off my tears and dried my eyes and
when the door opened
i put on a show denise are you okay
they asked i replied you guys were just
being too loud i lied
i knew something was off i knew
something was wrong but i never brought
it up again and neither did they
it just got pushed underneath the rug
fast forward i’m in my prime years of
and i just decided to start my self-love
journey
now this was 10 years ago
i thought self-love was what the media
portrayed it to be
fancy robes face mask maybe painting my
nails and toes
i was sitting in my favorite class as a
freshman at the city college of new york
intro to psychology and as i’m taking my
notes and i’m looking up and down at the
board
i looked up for the next slide and at
the top
written in bold big font
it read anxiety
and as my professor began to explain and
share with us the symptoms of this
disorder
i started to feel a pit in my stomach
a hole in my chest i started to sink
inside of my seat
and i felt like everyone was looking at
me he had to have been talking about me
and in that moment i realized all of
three things
one when i ran into that bathroom
at nine years old nine-year-old denise
was having an anxiety attack
actually i have been suffering from
anxiety
this whole time and i never knew it
because i continuously
decided to push it under the rug silence
myself just so that i can hold
that strong black woman trophy
that overwhelming feeling continued to
visit me but i never
addressed it two
i realized that if i experience this at
nine
and i’m now figuring about it now how
many more things have i silenced
and for how long three
i realized that whatever i’ve been doing
on my self-love journey
with these fancy masks and robes isn’t
working
and if i wanted to see real change that
hierarchy of self-love
changing my behavior changing my
feelings changing my thoughts i had to
do the external
i had to leave the external work and do
the internal work
there was a crying young nine-year-old
black child
hidden inside a bathroom for years
trying to tell me something was wrong
but i continuously decided to push her
away so that i can
push through carry on pull it together
it was in that moment that i realized
the gap in between self-love and mental
health
the two seems to be two separate
journeys but they actually are the same
they hold the same weight
each one reflects the other
it was in this moment that i realized
that if i needed to actually heal
i had to do the work and to do the work
meant that maybe it was time
for me to start to look into my emotions
and learn who they are
and i did this through self therapy
what lies in between self love and
mental health is self
therapy and it is in that space that you
begin to form healthy relationships with
your emotions to actually start speaking
to that crying
inner child to learn who
is this anxiety why is she here what
does she need and how can i help her
it was in that moment i realized that
this whole time i have been coping
and not healing
black women could use self-love to help
themself heal
through self-therapy
by studying themselves questioning
themselves and becoming so aware of
themselves that when anxiety comes to
visit they know who she is
they know what she needs they know how
to heal her
i was able to use this method
of self-love to self-therapy to reach
mental health
starting a self-love journey is the
black woman’s pathway
to mental health
and honestly after doing this journey
for all of 10 years
i feel stronger than ever
self-love is healing and there is power
in healing there is strength in healing
and i’m happy i know something today
that i didn’t know before
that the strong black woman is the
healed black woman
if all women started a self-love journey
we could heal generations
thank you
you