Self-Esteem is Spiritual: A Black Woman's Guide to Cultivating Confidence
Introduction Over the past few months, I have been seriously contemplating how trauma - both generational and in my childhood - has impacted me and molded me into this complex being that was somehow hard to digest. I processed how myself, and my girlfriends in the sister circle, had to fight at home, at school, at work, and more just to be seen as human. You know, alive with feelings, blood, dreams, and yet it's a hard to grasp subject that Black women are not monoliths. Some of my earliest memories were jabs at my appearance, demeanor, and how small I was for my age. I was five years old and didn't understand why I had to drink pediasure and take nasty medicine prescribed in amber-colored plastic bottles. Eventually, I realized that I committed the sin of being frail in the South, and later in adulthood of being "too big". My lighter complexion had grown more toasted and warm, taking after my mother's cocoa tone, to which my father noticed and didn't h...