Hey, y’all. New to this space? Welcome! Let me get you up to speed. Exactly 1 week ago, I posted a #BlueNote that hit home for a lot of folks. It led me to 7 things I thought I’d share with you. Here’s a rewind of the previous:
- Thing 1: “…for all us to eat”
- Thing 2: The reason is because
- Thing 3: Let your “you” flag fly
- Thing 4: The power of one
- Thing 5: An attitude of gratitude
- Thing 6: You get what you give
Last but not least, thing 7: embrace our humanity
It should surprise no one to learn that those who have engaged with last week’s post are from varying walks of life: different backgrounds, ethnicities, upbringings, philosophies, belief systems, cultures—I could go on. Yet the emotions those two sentences brought up bore a lot of overlap. From anger to hurt to betrayal to a heartfelt cosign, you got it and felt it because of a past experience.
It got me thinking just how despite our differences, hundreds of you connected around this single idea: that staying silent in the face of mistreatment is wrong. And it made me think of Rihana’s acceptance speech at the NAACP Image Awards. It’s been making the rounds but going to boil it down to its key parts: there’s no such thing as a problem being any single group’s problem. It’s not a they but a we problem, not a you but an us problem. And if you take away nothing else from the content shared here, I hope you’ll take away that.
You may not always know what it’s like to live a day in the life. You may even categorically disagree with how I label myself (as invisible). It’s possible you can’t at all relate to the majority of the content on this page because you aren’t in this demographic or simply because it hasn’t been your experience. However, those of us who are marginalized know that stripping away or disregarding the rights of those with less power serves as the canary in the coal mine. Ignoring it because it’s not a you problem won’t keep it from staying that way forever. I highlight the challenges faced by Black women not because I believe us to be the only marginalized group. I do so for the same reason that a podiatrist doesn’t do open heart surgery: this is what I know. And I do not believe that these issues that affect countless Black women get talked about enough.
Yet as much as I share with my primary audience always at the forefront, part of me hopes that this helps to highlight the humanity of our lived experiences as Black women. We hurt and feel pain no differently and are merely seeking to not be treated as less than or as superhuman (because that also strips us of our humanity). But we know full well we cannot turn the tide on our own. So, please, be an ally in words and in deed. Or, as Riri so eloquently stated, “pull up… Imagine what we could do together.”
G’nite!
The Invisible Black Woman 
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