Unseen, Yet Unbroken: The Resilience of Black Women

Whether you're holding a camera to record, or a picket sign to show your allyship for something too important to remain silent about, you're involved. You’re demonstrating that you care, demonstrating that your version of humanity towards a more equitable future is in action. For me, my allyship in action has always leaned towards women and children. Perhaps empathizing, because I am one—daughter, woman, mother, grandmother. My support always seems to go in that direction. But if you ask me to dig a little deeper, I would begin to notice that I am in support with those most oppressed. A place where my empathy seems to naturally flow: in the direction of the Black female.

For years, the Black female child/woman has not received the protection and standard of care that others take for granted. As a Black woman myself, I have sat with this reality, knowing that many Black females then grow without confidence instilled, succumbing to abuse, believing somehow they deserve it. Abuse feels as natural as breathing because we are taught that with Black skin were in comes with struggle. Our wombs, our bodies, never truly belonged to us.

So for many in reclaiming ourselves, we’ve had to protest. We’ve had to fight to be seen, to be heard. And in doing so, we’ve had to cultivate our own style of confidence in spaces that scream the opposite. But being a confident Black woman often means standing alone. We are told we don’t know our "place," as it is defined by someone else. Self-care becomes selfish in a world that tells us servitude is our destiny. We’re in no man’s land without it.

So that self-care is also an act of resistance. In a world that expects Black women to sacrifice their well-being in acts of servitude, reclaiming our time and space to nurture ourselves is defiance. However, it’s not enough to just carve out time for ourselves; we need to dismantle the toxic practices we’ve been taught. Our self-care must go beyond surface-level rituals and truly nourish our spirits. It’s about undoing the harm, both external and internal, and finding healthier ways to protect our minds and bodies.

My desire is to help women discover these healthier practices, to show that self-care doesn’t have to be about unattainable standards or superficial fixes. It’s about healing from the inside out, shedding the toxic beliefs we’ve internalized about our worth. True self-care is about saying “no” to what diminishes us and “yes” to what uplifts us.

So, I ask: Can you hold your own hand? Have you hugged yourself? When was the last time you said “thank you” for making it through another long day? The kind of day you make look amazing, even when it’s been brutal. Because this, too, is part of our legacy—our resilience. We continue to rise, despite the world’s attempts to diminish us, despite the struggle, despite the isolation. We reclaim ourselves every day, even when no one is watching. And in that reclamation, we find a self-care that truly sustains us.