I want black women to know we’re all deserving of love, peace, opportunity, stability, respect, joy and abundance. I want us to know that there’s always enough. I want more black women to have an abundance mindset. A growth mindset. A wealth mindset. I want us to be on a path of continuous self-improvement— always getting better. I want us to continue loving and supporting each other. I want us to focus on creating better for ourselves and those around us. I want us to think higher and bigger.
Can we please stop associating being a good person with how much you’re willing to suffer in silence for other people? You can be a kind person and still say “no, I don’t have the time/energy to help you with that.” You can be a kind person and still say “this makes me uncomfortable, please stop.” You can be a kind person and still say “I disagree and here’s why.” You can be kind and still say “I’m not okay with this.” Being kind is about treating people with kindness and respect, not about being the human equivalent of a doormat!
Photographer Jack Garofalo captured a series of striking photos of Harlem, New York for Paris Match magazine during a period of six weeks in the summer of 1970.
nobody is irrelevant. nobody is invisible. your neighbors know your name and see you set off to school or work or the backyard everyday, sometimes with a spring in your step and sometimes with hunched over shoulders. there was this one time some stranger pointed you out to their friends and said “that’s the haircut I want” or “I have that shirt, too” or “they go to my school”. someone has admired the way you carry yourself or gave a presentation or even the way you’re so polite when you first meet a person. you’ve made comments or jokes that have stuck in minds of overhearers and eavesdroppers. when old classmates of yours think back to kindergarten or fourth grade or sophomore year they remember you and have an opinion of you. you’ve made recommendations of songs and restaurants and even cookie brands and actually introduced people to their all-time favorites. the cashier at the grocery store knows exactly what laundry detergent your household uses, or even if you don’t do your laundry at all.
you can never be irrelevant. there’s pieces of you everywhere, in a dozen lives, in a hundred dreams, in a million memories. maybe it’s true that you don’t have any friends, and you have a sucky relationship with your family or no family at all and no-one ever checks up on you, and you’re really very lonely, but that doesn’t determine your worth. you do. and so do the billions of small attributions you’ve already made to the world, both long-term and short-term. so thank you.
I’m crything. Thank you OP. This is beautiful, especially that last paragraph. ~nya
of course!! i hope you keep this close to your heart and know how loved and how seen you are just for being alive ♡
realistic growth includes failure and setbacks alike, but you will never undo what you’ve already grown through. you’re doing great even if you slip up, please be a little kinder to yourself.
Y'all know that individual health behaviors - choices around nutrition, exercise, smoking, etc. - only account for about 25% of a person’s health status? The determinants of health are largely social: income and education level, the safety of one’s physical environment (e.g. working conditions, clean water), and degree of social support. Trauma is far worse for health than fast food.
It’s tempting to subscribe to a just world theory, where good things happen to good people (or people who make good decisions), and problems befall problem people, but that just isn’t the world we live in.
Most sick people have spent their lives fighting against oppressive circumstances. They don’t invite illness and hardship with their bad decisions, they are miracles of survival in a sociopolitical environment that’s hostile to their very existence.
Remember to support Black people! Not just famous black people, but Black people in your everyday life. Elevate their voices. Listen to them. Black men, women and nonbinary people. Lightskin and darkskin Black people. Disabled Black people, Black people with all sorts of conditions. LGBTQ+ and cishet Black people. Black people all over the world.
Not just February, but every day of every month, every year.
Also building a life worth living is…. Such an important concept to me. I don’t know if I fully understand it because I wasn’t able to finish my dbt program, but here’s the thing.
My therapist at the time told me, in regards to the above concept, “You can put in all the work you want in regards to healing, but if you haven’t built a life worth living, it’s going to be exhausting to continue on”
And I remember being angry then because I was like dude, I’m suffering so fucking much it’s not like I can get a job and move out lmao? I can’t escape my physical reality so how the Fuck Do u expect me to do That….
But now I realize like. It doesn’t HAVE to be massive life decisions. That is definitely still on my agenda. But something they also taught us was to schedule positive things into our week. And I think that was honestly going to tie into this as a whole. It’s something that’s important in a life worth living. Having things you enjoy, that fulfill you, that make you smile, that make it worth staying here, no matter how small.
For me that’s art, and music, and my friends, and creating in general, and the ocean, and much more.
But sometimes, with all the pain I Experience, it can be easy for these things to slip out of my immediate consciousness. It can be easy to be completely consumed by battling my mental illness. The thing is, this is exhausting. And I really think, when I reach my “I’m fucking done” points, it’s when I’ve neglected to make sure I’m feeding my brain healthy healing positive experiences as well.
So a big thing I need to work on right now is reintroducing things I love.
Anyway I dunno maybe this will help someone. Feel free to reblog I suppose. Take good care all!
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