A World That Includes You

The belief that the whole wide world rests on your shoulders and your shoulders alone is just that, a belief. It’s not a truth. It’s isolating and detrimental to view yourself as separate from the world. As someone who exists outside of the world. As someone who exists to simply be an instrument of “the world”. You are so much more than that. You are in and of the world. When you thrive the world thrives too.

I’ve intimately hung out with my own martyr complex - I’ve spent years unpacking the impulse to save and be saved. I’ve spent years unpacking the belief that my worth and my value stems from what I can do for other people. For me it took a few brutal seasons of suffering to realize I was in no position to save anybody but myself — even that was a mountain all its own.

It is beautiful to feel called to serve — but the call to serve does not negate your humanity and your importance just as you are. Service is not a substitute for the fact that you matter just because and just as you are.

Understand that feeling responsible for the well being of others at your own expense is a role that Black Women have long been expected to play. Awareness is an instrument of healing. Pay attention to how something feels. Get curious with your own impulses. Give yourself the space to be human. Give yourself the space to believe that in meeting your needs you meet the needs of the world. Dream of what community rooted in this shared belief looks like. Dream of what support looks like when it isn’t tied to self-sacrifice or self-abandonment. When it is rooted in a vision of wholeness and self-respect and the understanding of unquestionable worth.

You are important. Not because of what you’ve done or what you will do - not because of how you are seen or what you’ve accomplished, not because of what you have or what you might give.

You are simply important.

There is no saving a world that doesn’t include you.

Stop trying to save a world that doesn’t include you.