The summer before the “Rona” dropped into our lives was a ‘hot girl’s summer’, thanks to Megan Thee stallion’s song Hot Girl Summer. If you missed hot girl summer somehow, it was meant to represent being your authentic self, being confident in who you are and having fun doing it. Urban Dictionary defined it as “just being you, just having fun. It’s about turning up, driving the boat and not giving a damn about what nobody’s saying.”
Little did we know after hot girl summer we would move into the loneliest and coldest year ever.
During the past year racial tensions in this country reached levels that we haven’t seen in a very long time, jobs were lost at a rate not seen since the Great Depression, churches and schools closed for the first time in history, our entire way of living was uprooted in an instant; we were pushed to the brink.
During this time not only did the world and our lives change, but many of us changed personally. With so much time alone, the normal available distractions to keep us from us facing us or getting to know us were removed.
If you are like me, your life may look totally different than when the “Rona” reared her ugly head. While last year was unthinkably hard, many of us have seen just how strong and resilient we are. Last year became the year of the pivot. Over the past year more businesses have started than in the past 10 years. In fact, according to an article on Oberlo.com titled How Many New Businesses Start Each Year?, Q3 of 2020 new business applications reached an all-time high with 1.5 million new business applications filed. That’s a 82.3% year over year increase. This is just the ones that were filed. We all know someone who has unofficially started a business as well.
In addition to the rate of which new businesses were formed, new books were written, podcasts were started, passions and hobbies pursued, traumas were faced and healed, new relationships were formed for some, freedom from toxic relationships were gained, parents became employees/business owners and teachers, and so much more. As a whole, we are not the same coming out of the “Rona” as we were going in. Even if you haven’t done a “new” thing, mentally we survived spending more time alone, while watching some of the most challenging things we had ever seen in our lives – bottom line, our resiliency increased.
So now what?
Outside and the world is opening up just in time for Summer. We have been held up inside on house arrest for a year. When you step outside this summer to reclaim your life, I encourage you to do it “Unapologetically Opulent”.
What does that mean exactly?
The word opulent means abundance, plentiful, richly supplied, having wealth. It’s grand, big, not easily obtained, and it’s certainly not common. I’ve expanded this definition to mean “being unapologetically opulent is giving yourself permission to be all the things that society says that we aren’t as black women. It is owning our value, leveling up our standards, walking in our excellence, choosing our paths, believing we can have it all, and creating our own tables when needed and determining who sits there. Unapologetically.”
For most of our time in this country, society has tried to put black women into a box. You try to control that which you don’t understand and that which you are intimidated by. Show me a woman or man that can do what we as black women have done and still do today. I’ll wait!
Since being brought to this country, black women have breathed life into everyone. We have watched our men as they were beaten, sodomized, sold off, all while taking care of our children, masta’, his house, and his children.
Our beauty has been challenged, deemed, and copied. Our passions, drive, intelligence, and resilience has earned us the title of angry. We have been demeaned and torn down by the men that were meant to protect us, we have given our sisters more cuts and bruises to the point that when you see black women working together and supporting each other it’s a shock.
It’s a fact that black women are the most educated group in this country. Yet, we are still paid significantly less than our counterparts and are twice as likely to be depicted negatively in media than positively according to an article on Thoughtco.com “Black Women Are The Most Educated Group in the US.”
As we emerge from the house this summer, show off all the work that you have done to better yourself. Keep pursing those dreams, goals, facing your fears, doing the work to make you better. The work never stops, new levels may bring new devils. Each level you climb there will be more that you have to work on, to face, and overcome, to get to the next level. As the sun kisses your melanated skin don’t shrink back, and dim your light, but shine bright like the diamond you are.
Brag on yourself, celebrate yourself. Be proud of all that you have accomplished and are doing and keep doing it.
When you emerge from house arrest this Summer emerge Unapologetically Opulent!
