The Invisible Black Woman

It’s amazing how much more time you have on your hands when you’re not averaging 120 hours a pay period. The number of weeks that I threw my hands up and just entered the obligatory amount on my timesheet rather than admit that I was coming very close to making minimum wage rather than my actual hourly rate was laughable. I remember having a conversation with a colleague about that once. He very matter of factly stated—and I’m paraphrasing because that convo was a minute ago—“by the time you average your actual hours against your hourly rate, you’re losing money.” I never had the courage to do the math, but I knew for certain it wouldn’t add up. I just kept telling myself that it was better I take the hit than my team. I was okay if my work-life balance didn’t exist as long as they could be insulated. That’s the lie I told myself to justify the insane and unsustainable hours and workload.

But, I digress.

What I started to say is that being on leave afforded me a lot more time on my hands. And in my quest to distract myself from all the what ifs of what my professional future held, I took up binge watching a bunch of shows that have been around for a minute. One show in particular, I have a love-hate relationship with: Chicago Med. Plot holes and inaccurate medical approaches aside, their doctors are on one. From breaking patient confidentiality to locking themselves up in a room with a patient to allowing a patient access to a fatal injection (these are all real episodes, I promise), their doctors and most of their staff, truth be told, are outta hand.

But for every head-scratcher scene or episode, there are just as many (or enough) good ones that keep me watching. I am now up to Season 6 and last night I watched Episode 5. If you are watching the show, and haven’t made it this far, here’s your spoiler alert.

This episode centered around Maggie, the charge nurse of the ER. She and her husband are fostering a sick kid named Augie who needs a liver transplant. Maggie decides to throw a Hail Mary and sign up her foster kid for My Heredity and Me (or something like that, I’m not remembering right now). She’s hoping that maybe they’ll get a match from a long-lost relative and they’ll be able to get him the transplant he needs. Fast forward to several scenes later and she hears that there are no matches in the system. She’s crushed, of course, and her coworker finds out the sad news. She tries to comfort her by saying something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure something out. You’re the strongest woman I know.” Instead of smiling back, Maggie retorts back, “I’m not invincible, you know!” and storms off.

Sometime later, she is having a chat with the head of psychiatry, Dr. Charles, about what went down. For this part, I’m just gonna paste the exchange between them. If I missed a word or two, don’t come for me, Peacock (please and thank you)!

– I think I wear my strength like a badge of honor, something passed down to me.

– From your mother?

– And her mother, and her mother’s mother. Navigating through this world as a woman, a Black woman, you get a thick skin.

– Necessary … armor.

– But it sometimes also feels like it’s an expectation that people have of me. Like I’m not allowed to have a vulnerable moment.

– Heavy burden to carry, Mags.

– It’s just, I don’t—I don’t want to let anybody down.

And scene!

I felt those words in the depths of my spirit. But I would go as far as dropping the qualifier. There’s no “Like” about it. I, we, as Black women are not allowed to be vulnerable. We are always expected to be on. To be gracious. To be superhuman. To overperform. To overdeliver. To carry the department, the team, the organization on our bending but not broken backs. But any sign of vulnerability or humanity is seen as a weakness or threatening.

The best illustration I ever saw that explains this to a tee I saw on LinkedIn. If I can track it down, I’ll link it here at some point. The illustration is done as a comic, with four frames. In the first frame, there is a Black woman in the water, clearly struggling to stay above water. The next frame shows a hand reaching toward her now-submerged body only to give it a high-five and say, “You’re so strong!”

Welp.

The number of times my current job has made me cry has been countless. It is so many I couldn’t honestly tell you the actual number. And if I’m being fully transparent, it’s the only job I’ve had that has ever injured me to the point of tears. And the number of times I have cried at work, in front of someone else, is also not insignificant. The only supervisor that made me cry over something good was my last one. They went to bat for me and fought for my promotion. And when they told me the news, beautifully wrapped and laced in the highest performance rating available, my profuse thanks to them was quickly followed by tears of gratitude and relief. We shared a monumental moment that day. Not just because of the promotion, but because of their words. They candidly shared something I never expected. And their courage to share with me the truth was honestly worth more to me than the promotion and salary bump that came with it—but that bump was nice though.

I don’t know that they’ll ever fully appreciate what their words did and meant to me. Working in a space that always makes you feel that they’re out to get you but being met with the, “it’s in your head,” “you’re too sensitive,” or “you’re reading into things” does something to your psyche. By the way, these are all statements that coworkers and supervisors have said to me at various stages of my career.

So having someone who had the privilege to do nothing like everyone else, but choosing to stand up for me in the way that they did, I won’t ever forget that. And I know I’m dancing around exactly what it was they said and I do so purposely and deliberately. Not because I’m worried about outing them, but because that truth they shared was for my ears and heart only. The important part of this story if you’re reading this is that it’s not hopeless and there are actually good people left in corporate America. They may take a while to find, but they do exist.

That said, the reality is that they were the only person at work I was that vulnerable in front of that didn’t use that for their own personal gain or to hold it over me or against me. Sadder still is the look of sheer confusion or dead silence from colleagues when I dropped the facade and just started being honest. Rather than saying I was fine or okay when they asked, I would say, “I’m tired.” Or, “I’m hanging in there”—and we all know that the actual translation for that is “I’m hanging in there just barely and only by the thinnest of baby hairs.”

The belief that Black women are superhuman plays out in the most FUBAR and absurd ways. I truly believe it is that belief that makes the prejudice and misconception of us present in the most automatic and unconscious ways. Yes, there are times when it is very much intentional—the prejudice, the bias, the well-meaning but ignorant-as-two-left-shoes questions and comments—but oftentimes it’s just second nature.

Maybe the truth of the matter is if society were to admit that Black women hurt and have feelings too, that would make their transgressions in the workplace (and any other place they occur) that much more egregious. Imagine having to come to grips with the notion that believing another human, simply because of the color of their skin, doesn’t perceive pain the same way as you is flawed. That would keep me up at night.

In those moments where I showed vulnerability—and not by choice, mind you—it was often met with a bit of confusion by colleagues that didn’t look like me. You could almost see the moment when they realized that what they believed was true about Black women wasn’t quite exactly accurate. And it often made me think back to the crime dramas I would watch and one of the rules they tell you about that is the key to your survival in the event you’re ever kidnapped or held hostage. The rule is that you’re supposed to talk to your captor about yourself. Tell them your name, about your family, and other personal facts about yourself. Doing that humanizes you to them and makes it less likely that you’ll meet an untimely end. So as Black women especially, we have to find ways to remind our colleagues that we’re also human. Just because we have this innate ability to outperform our peers with one hand tied behind our backs doesn’t mean we’re impervious to the jokes, the overt and covert comments made about us. In fact, it’s that experience that compels us to don our cape, in hopes that it obliterates everything we face on a daily basis in public spaces.

Sadly, as I sit and reflect on the deep lessons and reminders by way of Chicago Med, I can honestly say that vulnerability at work is not something I recommend to professional Black women. And I don’t say these words lightly. I have worked long enough to see a woman much taller and bigger than me get up, stand over me and point her finger in my face, get loud, all while our supervisor watched her. At no point was she stopped or did my supervisor intervene. The whole time it happened, all I thought about in that moment was what would happen if I matched her energy. One of us would be escorted off the premises by security. I’ll let you figure out which of the two of us that would be.

Here’s the gag of that whole event. Once said colleague was done unloading, the “meeting” ended—if you could even call it that—and I was asked to stay back. All I wanted to do was just grab my things and go home, but I knew better than to say that. My boss closed the door behind them and asked me if I was okay. It was at that moment that my face very much looked like the toddler in the backseat who is giving mom the side eye. I’m sure you know the one.

I don’t remember the exact words, but I do recall saying something along the lines of, “are you serious?” I should point out at this juncture that my then-boss and I had a pretty solid working relationship and I would go as far as say friendship. It’s important to note that because otherwise, that’s not how I would have responded to the question. I said something along the lines of I couldn’t believe that just happened, to which they responded, me either. I very pointedly stated that the whole time, I had to sit there and make sure I didn’t say or do anything that would be considered threatening—and you just sat there.

Their response? “I didn’t know what to do.” Umm, how about anything but sit there like you’re watching your favorite soap opera? And believe me when I say that I know how it would have gone if I were the aggressor. A similar instance happened with someone who looked like me with someone who looked like “her” and let’s just say, said individual wasn’t around for very long. And yes, after it all happened, I cried in front of my boss. Tears of outrage and hurt. And then and only then, as they sat there flustered at my tears, did they apologize.

Vulnerability at work ain’t for us. Don’t fall for it. But at the same time, damn!, don’t let that color everything else in your life. What do I mean by that? Well, if you notice the end of the exchange, after Maggie laments how she feels like she’s not allowed to be vulnerable, she has the sad audacity to worry about letting people down.

Jesus, be a fence.

I facepalmed so hard when I saw that, more so at me than at myself. If “literally dying while worrying about the other guy” was a person, that would be a lot of us. Hell, Episode 1 talks about the very absurdity behind worrying about all the wrong damn things and people. Yes, I fully stand 10 toes down on my belief that vulnerability at work for us is no bueno. But that’s at work. At home, it should be a different story altogether. Just like we’re not supposed to bring home to work with us, we need to do a better job of leaving work at work when we go home. And sure, in this day and age where working from home is much more common, that is easier said than done, but we need to make a conscious effort to leave it at work. Had I done so sooner, I probably could have avoided this. I’ll never know.

Don’t allow your work environment, however hostile, lead you to create distance between you and your loved ones. Let them in, ugly cry in front of them with reckless abandon. The longer you hold it in because you’re doing it for however long you are at work, the harder it will be to break that habit. I’m embarrassed to admit the amount of time it took me to tell my husband I was scared and worried about everything that was happening. I was so worried about his health and how he may internalize my fears, that I was carrying the load for both of us.

It wasn’t until one of my conversations with my therapist, when I shared what I was feeling, that a mirror was put up to my face so I could understand just how ridiculous I was looking. In that session, as I cried and shared with my therapist how absolutely terrified and worried I was about what would come next, my therapist asked me what should have been a simple question: “what does your husband think?” Me, looking like deer in headlights, think to myself: ummm … whet?” So I mumble that I haven’t told him.

“Why haven’t you told him?”

“Because I don’t want to worry him and I’m worried about his health.”

“So?”

I blink several times in stunned silence.

“So the person that you are supposed to rely on the most, you don’t want to tell him you’re afraid because you’re worried about him? You don’t even want to allow him the opportunity to be there for you?”

Blinking continues.

“If you’re so busy worrying about him and his feelings, who’s worrying about you?”

I had nothing, y’all.

“I want you to consider the possibility that you are not giving him enough credit and that he may not take it as poorly as you think.”

I hate it when she’s right…

Shortly after my session, I sat down with hubby and I told him I needed to tell him something. I told him how I felt. He apologized because he wished I’d told him sooner and he held me while I cried in his arms. I really gave him so little credit because again, I was busy worrying more about him than about myself.

So the moral of the story is really quite simple, and this goes out to the Black women, the others, and the allies—there’s something here for you too!

Dear others, please stop treating us as if we are inhuman, unfeeling beings that don’t take anything personal. Stop being comfortable talking to and treating us any kind of way. Our pain threshold is not limitless.

Dear allies, keep doing what you’re doing. Continue to show up and speak up on our behalf. You may well be the only person doing so in the space we’re navigating in, and it is often the one sliver of hope we have to hang onto, especially on the rough days.

Dear Black woman, be vulnerable with those who love you and champion you and make you feel safe. You have the right to be all of who you are around and among those who celebrate it.

Stay (Black) and beautiful.