I’ve been thinking a lot about layers lately.
My first blog post here was titled “Peeling Back the Layers.” It was a metaphor tied to the citrus theme of this space—sharing orange slices, building community. But as I look back, I realize: vulnerability takes time. For so long, I feared showing those parts of myself, unsure of how they would be received. So I asked myself:
How can you build community around life’s zest and tang if you’re afraid to share those parts of yourself?
This isn’t about telling all my business. It’s about giving myself permission to live in my duality– to be both formidable and vulnerable. To lead with strength while also letting my care for others show through.
Living in Duality: What Does That Really Look Like?
The Burden
At this moment, I am living in a state of high-stakes duality. One day, I am called to be a pillar of strength and resilience: the “fixer.” The next, I am nurturing and gentle. This constant shift isn’t a contradiction; it’s the complex reality of Black womanhood.
But the world often refuses to see the “and.” It wants the rock, never the river.
The weight grows heavier when perfection and perception take over. Carrying the expectation to “handle it” isn’t just a matter of showing up—it’s a constant negotiation with yourself. I wonder what it means to keep pouring from a cup that’s rarely refilled. The burden is quiet and heavy, invisible to many, but pressing in on me all the same.
Some days, I hesitate before reaching out for help. I wonder if asking for support will be seen as failure, or worse, it might be seen as confirming someone else’s bias. I recognize how easily I silence my own pain, convincing myself I can handle it, that I must handle it.
But this habit isn’t just personal; it shapes the wellbeing of so many Black women who have been taught to hold it all together for everyone else.
The toll:
- Anxiety and burnout simmer beneath the surface, rarely acknowledged, almost never tended to properly.
- We push through exhaustion because that’s what’s expected.
- We keep quiet about our struggles, scared of being labeled “weak” or “ungrateful.”
This is more than an individual struggle– it’s a public health crisis hiding in plain sight.
Direct question: Have you ever ignored your own exhaustion just to keep going?
The Beauty
Yet duality is not just a burden. When we choose to release perfection and perception fear it becomes something beautiful; if we’re brave enough to see it.
Owning both resilience and softness means I am whole, not fractured. I can be both the rock standing firm in a storm and the river that brings life and healing. There’s power in knowing I don’t have to choose just one version of myself to present to the world. When I release the need for perfection, duality stops being a burden and becomes my superpower.
The “and” is where the beauty lives. In the space where I can stand strong while loving with openness, to be fierce and vulnerable, to stand tall and also rest. That’s how we live in color, not grayscale.
What does your own duality look like? Where do you see the beauty in balancing what’s expected with what’s true?
The Mask of Strength: Navigating Leadership and Legacy
Recently, the weight of duality has been palpable. When leadership shifts, uncertainty ripples through a school community, and I have found myself stepping up to ensure both stability and support for my team.
The Reality Behind the Scenes
It’s easy for folks outside the work to assume they know what I do– throw a few events, order some supplies, answer an email or two. But leadership, in real life, is messier and heavier than any job description lets on.
I’m spinning plates that sometimes only I can see– and every one of them matters to someone. There are days when I’m tracking attendance, sorting out budgets, negotiating compliance, answering a parent’s last-minute call, and still thinking about the bigger picture. Not for applause, not to prove anything, but because if I don’t do it, someone gets overlooked.
Sometimes I wish more people understood (or cared to ask) what it really takes to hold a school together.
But ultimately, those who get it, get it– and as for the rest, maybe it’s not for them to see.
Ever felt like people only notice what’s visible on the surface, and not the hours you put in behind the curtain? Or maybe you’ve found yourself quietly keeping everything running, even when misunderstandings or gossip threaten to minimize the real work?
The Perpetual Caregiver
Her milk sustains a nation.
From the time of enslavement, Black women’s bodies have carried a burden that went far beyond their own families. Their breast milk nourished children who would grow to see them as less than human, even as their own children were taken or denied that same nurture. Black women mothered a nation through unimaginable pain and abuse. She was forced to give physically and emotionally, sustaining both the enslaved and the enslaver.
That legacy still lingers. Today, Black women are still expected to pour themselves into others, often with little recognition or care for their own needs. The expectation to give, to nurture without limit, is an inheritance that surfaces in boardrooms as much as in kitchens, in schools, churches, and community spaces. Whether I am at work, at home, or in my community, the labor remains: often essential, often invisible.
The work I’m doing now—the emotional, strategic, and unseen labor—resonates with the generations that came before me. Making it all appear seamless transcends mere skill; it is, fundamentally, survival. Across generations, necessity has woven itself into expectation, transforming strength into a cultural emblem. Our strength serves as protective armor at times, yet can also feel like a cage.
As bell hooks illuminates in Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism:
“the black woman’s struggle for identity has been complicated by the fact that she has had to cope with both sexism and racism while at the same time trying to come to terms with herself as a member of an oppressed group” (hooks, 1981).
Growth and leadership are not bound to a job description, especially not for Black women. They’re ongoing, layered, ever-evolving; a conversation with oneself at every milestone, in every room.
There’s a loneliness in being both needed and misunderstood. This isn’t limited to certain institutions. It happens wherever Black women find themselves at the center, quietly sustaining entire systems.
While feelings of isolation are not unique to me because I have colleagues of different races and genders in similar roles have voiced the same, there’s an additional, sharper edge to the solitude that comes with Black womanhood.
Navigating Black womanhood means balancing the triple-consciousness of race, gender, and class, but in my case– role, and knowing that each comes with its own set of judgments and impossibly high expectations:
- I am simultaneously perceived as not competent enough and yet heralded as Black excellence.
- I am expected to nurture from womanhood, yet doubted for my data-driven decisions.
- I am celebrated for being a role model of #BlackGirlMagic, yet confronted with the stereotypes of the “angry Black woman” who is cold, harsh, and aggressive.
This intersectionality amplifies both how I am seen and how I am judged, adding layers to both the pedestal and the scrutiny. But the beauty of it all is that my duality is always there, asking me to honor both my formidable presence and my tender, soft self– even as the world questions, celebrates, or scrutinizes it.
The Politics and Power of Softness
Our efforts are rarely just for self– they are about upholding a lineage, a community, a history of women who made sustenance out of nothing and kept a nation afloat.
Because when our resilience is idealized without context, it eclipses our need for rest, care, and softness. I keep returning to the idea of a “Soft Girl Era” for myself— not as an aesthetic, but as a genuine longing to move through my days with ease, gentleness, and the permission to actually be cared for.
Softness, vulnerability, and even the need for protection are so often portrayed as luxuries that belong to everyone else– rarely Black women. In professional spaces, and frankly everywhere else, showing empathy or softness can get twisted as a lack of strength, when in reality, it takes radical courage.
bell hooks offers insight into this dynamic, noting,
“Being open, honest, and vulnerable is the only way we can heal—as individuals or as a nation” (hooks, 2000, All About Love).
Yet choosing softness is sometimes met with side-eyes, skepticism, or outright pushback– especially when so many expect me and women like me to remain the backbone, carrying the load without a pause. If you’re reading this as a Black woman (or loving someone who is one), you might recognize the longing to be witnessed in your wholeness. Wishing for a space where being gentle doesn’t threaten your credibility.
So I ask: Have you ever silenced your own weariness just to keep going?
In every space, the longing to be more than “just strong” is a reminder that softness isn’t weakness, and our vulnerability is part of what makes us whole.
On Admiration, Disappointment, and Growth
I think often about the Black women who led me– LaQuanya, Shavawn, Cheryl, Dr. Lessane, and many more. I admired these women deeply, sometimes to the point of putting them on pedestals in my mind. I rooted for them any chance I could, and I defended them in rooms where they weren’t present because of my respect and genuine hope to see them thrive.
But with that admiration came unrealistic expectations; when they didn’t live up to the perfect image I’d created, I felt disappointed— not because they failed, but because I set them up for a standard no one could meet. I see now that wasn’t fair.
There’s duality even in my reflection: loving these women, rooting for them fiercely (sometimes from afar, sometimes up close), while also thinking they should have been able to do more– when they were in fact already doing their absolute best, often with so little support or understanding.
I didn’t always recognize their boundaries as sacred or their silences as acts of protection; I mistook distance for weakness when what I was really seeing was wisdom…and survival.
I can admit now: I didn’t always give them the grace I’d demand for myself, and as I step into these shoes, I realize how much grace and understanding we all deserve.
Writing My Wrongs
Now that I’m in their seat, facing these burdens and this tightrope walk, I see that their duality was not just resilience– it was pure survival and a hard-won form of self-preservation. I’m still learning how to offer them the forgiveness and patience I never realized they needed, and even more, to write my own wrongs by letting myself move with the same grace and beauty in this complexity.
Vulnerability isn’t just a principle; it’s a responsibility: to them, to myself, and to every other Black woman learning that being soft is not a luxury, but a right.
Embracing the “And”: My Formidable Vulnerability
The Daily Practice of Both/And
Lately, I find myself standing in front of the mirror– figuratively, sometimes literally– asking who I am when nobody’s watching.
Some days, I feel like a fortress, holding back tears until the day is done. Other times, I’m all raw edges, letting the fullness of my feelings splash over the edge because holding it in feels too heavy.
It’s a daily lesson that vulnerability is not weakness; it’s how I know I am awake, alive, and real.
Everyday Duality: Examples from Life
- At work: Taking the tough stance in a meeting, then quietly sitting with the self-doubt that follows.
- At home: Planning family events, keeping everyone else’s needs in check—then wondering who has noticed you haven’t eaten all day.
- With friends: Offering the right words for everyone’s crisis, but not feeling safe enough to name your own.
From comforting a frustrated team member while at the same time carrying the stress of looming deadlines, compliance reports, and that mental spreadsheet of all the needs I’m balancing. I’ve made the tough call, knowing it will disappoint someone, and gone home carrying their sighs with me like a backpack I can’t put down. I have listened to stories about sick family members, about dreams for students, about burnout, hope, and disappointment– and held space even when I barely felt I had enough left for myself.
I question if anyone will ever really understand the caring hidden beneath the correction and the paperwork– and how much I actually care about they’re understanding or not.
Yet, I refuse to believe that life or leadership requires us to choose between being strong and being soft. Honoring the “and” isn’t always glamorous or poetic.
Can you recall a recent moment when you felt both strong and tender at once? How did you hold those emotions at the same time?
Making Space for Self: Why Rest Is Revolutionary
I’m realizing more every day that choosing myself, honoring my limits, asking for what I need, and admitting when I don’t have the answer is revolutionary.
As Audre Lorde wrote,
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
(Lorde, 1988, A Burst of Light)
Some days I get it right. Sometimes the “and” still feels heavy, messy, or misunderstood. But this is what real womanhood looks like to me. It’s loving myself and my people enough to keep showing up, embracing both the rock and the river inside me.
The Power in Our Fullness
Black womanhood is a symphony of contrasts. It’s a dance between strength and softness, resilience and rest. We are both the rock that holds steady and the river that flows freely, shaping the world around us with quiet power and undeniable grace.
Living in duality isn’t about perfection or performance; it’s about embracing the fullness of who we are. It’s about rejecting the world’s narrow definitions and choosing to honor every layer of ourselves—the tender, the tough, the vulnerable, and the victorious.
So, I will keep peeling back the layers. I will keep choosing to show up as my whole self, even when it feels risky. Because in that fullness, there is freedom.
How do you honor your own layers? What does it mean for you to live in your fullness? Let’s continue this conversation in the comments—I’d love to hear your reflections.
With zest and tang,
-Sauce Sculptress
References:
- hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981.
- hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2000.
- Lorde, Audre. A Burst of Light: and Other Essays. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988.
