From a young age, I understood that discipline and responsibility were the scales that measured my worth. For brown girls, this often means being trained to put our needs last. We grow up learning to carry responsibility early, fighting harder against a system that doesn’t always accept how we look or who we are, a system that expects us to be strong long before we understand what that strength costs.

So, for a long time, I did what was expected. I stayed agreeable. I doubted myself more than the systems around me. Writing became the one place where I could sit with thoughts that I wasn’t allowed to say out loud. For me, this was where confusion, discomfort, and truth could exist without being corrected..