The Invisible Black Woman

There’s a cost to everything we allow into our spirit. Words, though they may seem weightless, carry weight. They plant seeds, they water doubts, they either steady your soul or shake your footing. And while some words are nourishing, others are cheap: flimsy, careless, and spoken without thought or honor.

Cheap words don’t come dressed as cheap. They often slide in looking like flattery, like validation, like attention you’ve been waiting to hear. Or they come packaged as criticism so sharp you replay it for days, even when it was never worth repeating once. But cheap words have a tell: they don’t align with truth, with action, or with integrity. They’re empty calories for the soul. And when you consume too many of them, you’ll feel starved where it matters most.

Peace is too costly to be traded for someone else’s carelessness. Yet many of us bankrupt ourselves emotionally by accepting and internalizing every word thrown our way. The offhand comment from a coworker. The side-eye compliment from someone who doesn’t want to see us shine. The gossip whispered in corners. The silence in rooms where we needed affirmation but instead got indifference. These are cheap words, too. The ones unsaid but still heavy.

If you’ve ever sat up at night replaying a conversation you should’ve long forgotten, you know the price of cheap words. If you’ve ever shrunk yourself in meetings or dimmed your brilliance because of a stray comment someone made about your “tone” or “attitude,” you’ve already paid more than you should.

But here’s the thing: you control your peace like you control your bank account. You decide what deposits to accept and what checks to bounce. You are allowed—no, required—to reject words that do not honor who you are, what you’ve built, and where you’re headed. You don’t have to let every critique, every insult, every misguided opinion set up shop in your spirit.

Peace is a priceless asset. It’s not just calm; it’s clarity. It’s the unshakable knowing that you are enough, even when the world hasn’t caught up yet. Protecting it means setting boundaries about what you will and will not absorb. Sometimes that looks like ignoring the snide remark. Sometimes it looks like disengaging from debates where folks are more interested in being loud than being right. Sometimes it looks like reminding yourself that your value is not contingent on their approval.

Let’s be real: as Black women, our peace is already under attack from systems designed to rattle us. Workplaces, institutions, even communities sometimes profit off keeping us off balance. Which makes protecting our peace not just personal, but revolutionary. Every time we choose to filter out the cheap and hold fast to the worthy, we reclaim ground that was never meant to be stolen from us in the first place.

So here’s the charge: audit your intake. Ask yourself, what words am I holding onto that don’t belong to me? Who gave me this narrative, and why have I accepted it as truth? What would it look like if I only made space for words that affirm, uplift, and sharpen me?

Because words matter, but not all words deserve a home in you. Some should be left where they were spoken, discarded like the lint they are.

Your peace is a luxury item, but it’s also a necessity. Don’t trade it for cheap words. Don’t go broke emotionally because you’re still carrying opinions that were never based in fact. Hold onto what’s priceless: your wholeness, your calm, your ability to keep moving forward without the noise dragging you down.

Protect your peace like the sacred, rare currency it is. And the next time someone tries to pay you in cheap words? Cash the check in the trash.

Until next time, I wish you nothing but sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, which are no less fictitious than the confident creature that you are.