There was a version of me who believed that if I delivered my truth gently enough, it would be received gently in return.
She thought if she lowered her voice, added disclaimers, softened the edges, and smiled while saying hard things — people would stay. People would understand. People would choose her back.
They didn’t.
What I learned slowly — and painfully — is that softening my truth did not protect me. It only made me smaller. And when you make yourself smaller long enough, you start disappearing from your own life.
Emotional truth is not cruelty.
It is clarity.
It is saying:
This hurt me.
This mattered.
This was not okay.
I deserved better.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a vengeful way.
Just in a grounded, regulated, self-honoring way.
For a long time, I thought strength meant endurance.
Now I understand strength means accuracy.
Accuracy about what happened.
Accuracy about what I felt.
Accuracy about what I will no longer tolerate.
There is something sacred about a Black woman telling the truth without decorating it for comfort.
No performance.
No over-explaining.
No shrinking.
Just: This is what it was.
This is what it did to me.
And this is who I am now.
I am no longer sanding down my sentences to make them easier to swallow.
If my truth feels heavy, it’s because it carried me.