Because LinkedIn Had Character Limits

I woke up today with the weight of my childhood lessons pressing against my chest. You have to be twice as good to get half as far. It’s not a choice; it’s a fact. It’s the air I’ve been breathing since I was old enough to understand that my skin, my hair, my everything would always be “too much” for some people and “not enough” for others.

My grandmother used to whisper those words like a prayer, like armor she was strapping to my body before I stepped out into the world. It wasn’t cruel—it was survival. I think about how much she must have hated saying it, how much she must have hated living it. And now here I am, decades later, passing the same mantra down to myself every morning in the mirror. Be better. Be perfect. Be extraordinary, because good will never be good enough.

I don’t think people understand what that does to you. The way it chisels away at your soul, the way it replaces joy with vigilance. Every room I walk into, I’m calculating. Am I smiling enough to disarm them? Am I serious enough to be taken seriously? Did I say too much? Did I say too little? Every success feels fleeting because one mistake could undo it all. Every failure feels like confirmation of the worst thing they’ve already decided about me.

It’s exhausting to live this way. And lonely. God, it’s lonely. You can’t tell anyone how heavy it feels because they’ll either dismiss it or pity you. Dismissal is infuriating; pity is unbearable… so you carry it in silence, holding it together with duct tape and sheer willpower.

Hope is a dangerous thing for Black women. It’s a tightrope between faith and heartbreak, and we’ve fallen off it too many times to count. But still, I allowed myself to feel it for a moment: Kamala Harris. Her name on the ballot. Her face on the screens. Her legacy intertwined with mine, even though we’ve never met. She is a symbol of what’s possible when you fight through the noise, when you’re twice as good and then some.

And yet, I knew. Deep down, I knew what was coming. This country doesn’t just hate Blackness. It doesn’t just hate womanhood. It especially hates the combination of the two when it’s wrapped in power and grace and an unapologetic refusal to shrink. So when the results came in, I wasn’t surprised. But I was numb. She lost. She lost to a man who shouldn’t have even been on the ballot, a man who broke the law, broke the trust, broke the very fabric of democracy—and yet, her brilliance, her competence, her everything wasn’t enough. Her best wasn’t enough to beat his worst.

That’s what hit me the hardest. Not just the loss, but what it means. It means the rules are still the same. It means the game is still rigged. It means that no matter how hard we run, no matter how much we sacrifice, there’s always another hurdle, another slap in the face, another reminder that twice as good was never about fairness—it was about survival. And survival is not the same as living.

Today, I feel empty. There’s a quiet rage simmering under the surface, but mostly I just feel tired. I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove myself, and for what? For this? For a system that will always find a way to remind me of my place? I thought maybe we were getting closer. I thought maybe this time, this moment, would be different. But I’m done pretending. Done giving my energy to a world that won’t meet me halfway. Done trying to engage with people who look at a man like that and see someone worthy of their vote, of their loyalty, of their complicity. If you’re still clinging to this administration, if you’re still making excuses, you’re not worthy of my time, my energy, or my money. Period.

Today, I’m choosing myself. Not the fight, not the proving, not the exhausting quest to be “better” in a system that’s engineered to dehumanize me no matter what! Just me. My peace. My joy. My survival—not as an act of resilience, but as an act of selfishness.

I don’t care what you think of that. I don’t care if you think it’s divisive or bitter. I’ve bent over backward to make people feel comfortable, to bridge the unbridgeable, to soften my voice and my existence. I’ve done enough. I owe nothing to anyone who supports this country’s descent into hatred and chaos. Nothing.

If you’re reading this and you’re part of the problem, don’t bother reaching out. Don’t bother asking me for anything. Save your faux concern, your empty apologies, your shallow attempts to rationalize the irrational. I’ve given too much already, and I’m not giving any more.

Today, I’m choosing to take up space in my own life for once. Not to fight. Not to educate. Not to fix. Just to breathe. To exist. To feel whatever I need to feel without apology. And if that makes you uncomfortable, well, maybe it’s your turn to carry the weight for a change.