As a child born in the 80s in apartheid South Africa, the constant theme I heard growing up was freedom. Freedom for the struggle heroes in prison, freedom from the many constraints that systemic oppression presented to the adults in my life.
I recently read again in a perfectly performed audiobook of Audre Lorde’s A burst of Light and other essays. Besides being moved to the point of an ugly cry by how passionately she wrote against apartheid in South Africa; I was so inspired by the resolute way she fought to live a life of freedom. Evidenced by how she fought cancer with the same resolute spirit she fought against racial, sexism classism and homophobia. She gifted us amongst many others this quote: ‘If I didn’t define myself I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive’
I sit in consultations with Black women young and old trapped in professions and jobs that were defined for them by others and they are being eaten alive. It seems elitist and removed from the economic reality of Black people in this country when I tell them to follow their bliss and question the assumptions they’ve made about what pursuing that would mean for their lives.
The question are always different but the quest is singular. Black women want the freedom to be their true self, to live lives, to do work that fills them up. That quest was bought with the blood, sweat and tears of the ancestors – giants whose shoulders we stand on today. The invisible ten thousand we come in with in every room that we enter.
It is our generational struggle the struggle for freedom to self define. We no longer want to make career decisions from survival but from the freedom to choose.
Are you a Black Woman in the Workplace who is ready to leave their soul crushing job? I have just the program for you
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Black Women in the Workplace 