Quotes that Hit Different - Robbyn E.

I was disfellowshipped as a Jehovah’s Witness in 1993.  I was 20 years old. When you’ve grown up in a religion for most of your life and then are cut off from the community you grew up in and feel like God is not messing with you…it can really damage the way you view yourself. I have never doubted the existence of a higher power, but I really did think for a number of years that God wasn’t messing with me. Even though in 1998, I found Islam and learned that my oldest relative was God, who is absolutely moving in me…if I go down a negative self-talk rabbit hole…I can still feel this way.

How many times do we listen to ourselves talk shit to ourselves…ignoring all of our accomplishments…those that play out in public and those we know to be true in private. Now add our negative self-talk to how society talks to and about us. Especially as women. The gender/wage gap is a real thing. Now add being a Black woman in a society that demeans us at every single turn. Misogynoir. Don’t let me get starting on social media and the filters, yo! It can absolutely seem insurmountable. Except it's not. It can be hard, absolutely. Please know I’m not trying to act like this is easy. I struggle to accurately see myself every single day.  But, the truth is, we have real life examples of women who crashed through what society would have thought them capable of every single day. Women who have challenged their own negative self-thoughts and been proved wrong.

One of the things I have recently been thinking about is who I really am (to me…not how others see me), what I have accomplished and what are some of the things that I still want to do. I know I can do whatever it is that I have chosen to do because I have done it before. Time and time again. I am surrounded by dope women who have accomplished so much for themselves, their families, other women, and for society. Some of the personal stuff they and we have overcome…while being dope AF...I’m not even sure how. I would bet most don’t see them like we see them, but they BEEN flexing in their own respective ways…and we can too.  

Read the entire article that contains Robbyn’s quote here.