Being happy is something in life that is taken for granted, especially for women. When we are not happy, we make choices that aren't for our highest good. We stay in toxic jobs, relationships that are poison, and ingest substances by way of food, drink, and content that rapidly destroy our energetic resources. In one of my latest posts, I shared that your degrees won't protect or save you. They also won't be the root of your happiness unless you go on the path of a happiness frequency.
When you make choices, when you're happy,ppy you can be attuned to your higher self and your potential. Think back to your NYE vision board party. You are high energy and full of life. You are around people you love, and you may have a cocktail in hand. You see all the beautiful images of a life you have personally curated. You stand firm on this, " It will be my year. Then you wake up in the new year still buzzing but deflated by the end of the first week.
Happy and how it impacts your life
Happiness, often criticized as fleeting, is actually a high-energy force for shaping your life the way you want it. Those who dismiss happiness and say that one needs to be brutish in discipline are actually making your life harder. Yes, one needs accountability, but joy and happiness actually make things possible. You can't shame yourself into a better life. Often, when we are making choices about our lives from a low and unhappy place, we may pick things that, on paper, look presentable, and if we reach them, we will not feel the joy they were meant to bring because they were misaligned.
Over the years, I stayed away from happiness because it was unstable and foreign. I knew how depression felt, and I was very acquainted with unhappiness. I built my life around those things, thinking that if I could obtain them, I would have something to be happy about. In reality, all it did was place me in a cage of optics.
Many professional women are told to keep their heads down and work, and one day they will be in higher places. I have always felt this was an odd take, as one can't see where they are going if their head is down. However, now, over two decades in the world, I feel more aligned with the notion that this is pushed to keep you tethered to making others happy rather than yourself. A woman who is operating from happiness won't stand for toxicity of any kind and will allow herself to pivot and be in her rightful place, the driver of her life!
Happiness and how it can lead to your best life
When you are operating as a happy woman, all the options in this world become open to you. Many push back when I ask them this question, as it makes them feel vulnerable. No one wants to acknowledge they aren't happy. We live in a toxic positivity world that says one's desire for more is a sin.
Happiness allows you to release what is no longer aligned without anger or resentment.
Now, as I begin to pivot my life, this blog will serve as a dual space. One in which I bring more depth to topics society actually needs and support those called to work with me. Working with my current client now and seeing how she ebbs and flows into her highest form is something I can't put into words; it's equivalent to that first taste of your favorite summer fruit.
If you are ready to be in the designer space of your life, book a 15-minute consult to ensure alignment. Those who invest in their lives enjoy much richer realities. Just a warning: when you begin to align with happiness, you may never be able to return to the old way.
Your degrees won't protect you. Your degree doesn't make your life more valuable, but sadly, our society, even in the most innocent ways, often feels that one needs to parade one's credentials when tragedy strikes, and even more for a woman of color. The murder of Dr. Cerina Fairfax by her estranged husband hit me deeply as a life was taken violently, and the aftermath that was left. Before the grief had time to land, people started reciting her accomplishments.
The degrees, the dental practice, and the community work are pushed as part of a marketing campaign to validate her life and legitimize her agency, as if the goal were to establish that her life had been worth something before someone took it. That impulse revealed more than it intended to.
We have been collectively taught that credentials are a form of protection. If a woman builds enough proof of her value, the world will respond accordingly. Dr. Fairfax had done everything that promise required of her.
Your degrees won't protect you. What I want to examine in this post is why so many of us are still operating as if they will, and what it costs us to keep running that program.
The Legitimization Reflex
There is a particular pattern that shows up whenever a woman is harmed publicly, and it is especially visible when that woman holds intersecting identities.
The response almost always includes a recitation of what she accomplished. What she built. What she contributed. The implicit logic being: look at what she was. Look at what we lost.
I understand why people do this. It comes from grief. It comes from wanting to make the loss register in a way that demands a response. But underneath it lies an assumption that deserves questioning: that value requires evidence. A woman's life becomes more worth protecting once it has proven productive.
That assumption is one that many of us have absorbed and act on daily, often without realizing it.
What I Was Taught to Believe
I was raised on a very specific promise. Get the grades. Go to college. And the years of poverty, the weight of being a woman navigating spaces not designed for you, would somehow resolve. You would finally be taken seriously. You would finally be safe enough.
That promise has not held up. I know this not just intellectually but from two decades of trying to honor it. For most of my corporate life, I operated by suppressing the parts of myself that felt like liabilities. I adjusted how I dressed, how I carried myself, how much I revealed. The goal, beneath it all, was to communicate that I was acceptable. That I was not a disruption. That I had earned my place.
I recently completed my MSW, and I am in the middle of intentionally not pursuing the traditional path that would follow. Part of what made that decision difficult was confronting how much of my ambition had been driven not by genuine desire but by a need to be legitimized. To have enough proof that my perspective was worth taking seriously.
Imposter syndrome in high-achieving women often has less to do with actual competence and more to do with the internalized belief that you are always one credential away from being enough. That belief does not go away when you add another degree. It waits for the next threshold.
The Real Cost of Operating Outside of Alignment
When you spend extended time performing a version of yourself built around what is acceptable rather than what is true, it shows up somewhere. It shows up in health. In the quality of your relationships. In a persistent sense of disconnection from your own desires that is difficult to name but impossible to ignore.
This is not abstract. Research consistently links chronic identity suppression, particularly for women navigating structurally hostile environments, to elevated stress responses, burnout, and long-term health impacts. The body keeps an accounting even when the mind has convinced itself that it is fine.
The fastest way to lose access to what is genuinely good in you is to spend your energy maintaining a version of yourself designed for someone else's comfort.
That is not strength. It is a slow erosion dressed up as discipline.
Women are conditioned from early on to tie their value to what they produce or prove. This shows up differently depending on the path, career, motherhood, and relationship, but the underlying structure is the same. Worth is something you demonstrate. Safety is something you earn by becoming legible to the people who are deciding.
The intersection matters here, and I do not want to move past it. As a woman, identity is where I begin. But the data on what happens to women, specifically to women who also carry the weight of racial identity in a society still working out what it believes about that, is not something I can responsibly leave out.
The conditioning that contributes to this is not only external. We also pass it to each other and to the next generation. When we communicate directly or indirectly that a woman's value lies in what she accomplishes, we are not preparing young women for the world. We are preparing them to exhaust themselves trying to earn a safety that was never up for exchange.
A woman is worthy as she is. Not as she proves herself to be.
Reflection
I want to leave you with two questions, and I'd ask that you stay with them rather than answering quickly.
Where in your life are you pursuing achievement primarily as a means of feeling safe or finally enough, rather than as an expression of what genuinely calls you?
There is no wrong answer. But there is often a difference between the two, and it is worth knowing which one is driving you.
In what ways have you reinforced — in the women around you or in yourself — the idea that worth must be demonstrated before it is real?
This one tends to show up in small moments more than grand gestures. The way we respond to a woman's accomplishments versus her struggles. What we lead with when we describe ourselves. What we teach without meaning to.
Legitimization is not protection. It never was. And building our sense of value around it is a framework that will ask more of us than it ever gives back.
Closing
Your accolades are real. The work you have put in is real. None of that is the point. The point is that none of it was ever the source of your worth. It was always already there before the degrees, before the titles, before you had anything to prove.
Pursuing a career, a doctorate, or a business because it genuinely calls you is a worthy thing. Pursuing it because you believe it will finally make you enough is a different pursuit entirely, and it tends to lead to an exhausting place.
Your degrees won't protect you. But knowing, actually knowing, that your value is not contingent on what you achieve might be the most clarifying shift you can make. Not because it changes the world. The world has its own work to do. But because a woman who is not confused about her worth is not easily convinced she has to earn the right to take up space.
That is not something a credential gives you. It is something you return to.
I go deeper on this on my podcast, Mystique Femininity. The conversation there picks up where posts like this leave off.
Beauty as armor takes me back to my youth when many felt "Makeup is war paint."
My high school theater teacher said that to me during my junior year, and at the time, I did not fully understand what she meant. Beauty as armor was not a concept I had language for yet. But looking back, she was handing me a question I would spend years learning to ask.
Because I was never really taught that I was allowed to invest in my appearance. Taking time for myself was framed as indulgent. Beauty was not about expression or joy. It was something quietly dismissed, treated as vanity rather than identity.
And yet, years later, I found myself deeply invested in how I looked and how I was perceived. That is when a harder question surfaced.
Was this really me, or was I performing something I had learned?
When Beauty Becomes More Than Beauty
I used to spend entire weekends preparing for the week ahead. Hair done. Skin prepped. Nails maintained. Outfits planned.
It looked like discipline. But it felt like preparation for a performance I had not agreed to give.
For decades, beauty has functioned as a form of currency for women. Not just enhancement, but access. Access to being seen. To being treated with softness. To being considered worthy before you have even spoken.
Researchers and cultural critics have written about this for years: how physical presentation shapes how women are received in professional settings, medical offices, and everyday public spaces. This is not vanity. It is a rational response to a world that has historically rewarded a particular kind of visible femininity.
So when your beauty routine is rooted in what it can get you, it starts to lose meaning. It becomes transactional. That is where the idea of beauty as armor begins to take shape. Not something you consciously choose, but something you rely on. A layer between you and the world.
The Shift From Expression to Protection
There is nothing inherently wrong with beauty rituals. They can be grounding, restorative, even joyful. But the intention behind them matters enormously, and it's easy to lose track of it.
When you approach beauty from a self-first place, from how you want to feel rather than how you want to be perceived, the experience transforms. You are no longer performing. You are participating in something that belongs to you.
But when that intention shifts outward, beauty can quietly become armor. You wear it to navigate spaces more safely. To soften how you are received. To increase your chances of being respected in rooms where you might otherwise be overlooked.
For many women, especially when identity enters the picture, this is not imagined. It is learned through direct experience. Aging, body size, skin color, disability: each of these shifts how the world responds, and beauty becomes one of the few variables a person feels she can control.
That is not a weakness. That is adaptation. But adaptation has a cost.
Sometimes beauty is not about preference. It is about protection. Recognizing that does not make you shallow. It makes you honest about the world you are moving through.
But when beauty as armor becomes unconscious, it starts to shape identity in ways that go unnoticed. You begin to believe the effort is who you are. You begin to feel like, without it, you are less. And that is where the cost appears, not financially, but emotionally and over time.
You stop asking what you want. You start asking what will be accepted.
A Different Way to Relate to Beauty
There is another way to engage with beauty. Not as a requirement. Not as a shield. But as a choice that comes from the inside rather than the outside.
Where your rituals are not about earning visibility but about honoring how you feel in your own presence. Where you can go without it on a Tuesday and still feel like yourself. Where beauty does not carry the full weight of your worth.
This is not about abandoning your routine or performing effortlessness. It is about asking, honestly and regularly, who this is for.
Sit With This
Before you get ready tomorrow morning, try asking yourself these questions.
When did your beauty routine stop feeling like self-expression and start feeling like preparation? Who are you actually thinking about when you get ready? And if no one else were watching, what would you keep and what would you let go?
The Real Shift
Beauty is not the problem. It can be art, care, and a genuine expression of self.
But it cannot unconsciously carry the weight of your worth.
Because beauty as armor only works when you believe you need protection to be accepted. And when you operate from that belief long enough, it stops feeling like a strategy and starts feeling like the truth.
Maybe the real shift is not in what you do but in why you do it. When beauty is truly yours, it does not protect you from the world. It reconnects you to yourself. If you desire more depth and go below the optics, head over to my podcast, Mystique Femininity.
Women Aging Invisibility: The Truth No One Prepares You For
I have always felt like I was trying to outrun the sun.
Like if I didn’t become something before the streetlights came on, I would miss my window. Coming from nothing will wire you like that. You’re managing trauma while trying to build a life that doesn’t expose where you started.
Healing wasn’t something I did it became my identity.
For two decades, I tried to make myself normal. I held onto the belief that one day I would arrive at some version of healed, where life would finally soften.
Instead, I looked up, and I was no longer in my 30s.
No one tells you that time doesn’t pause while you’re trying to figure it out. That your body eventually starts telling the truth your mind has been organizing for years. The wear shows up. The exhaustion has texture. I will deal with it later when it comes due.
The world stops looking at you, not in a dramatic way. No announcement. Just a shift.
Midlife Women Reclaiming Visibility Means Questioning It Altogether
There is a specific kind of grief that comes with realizing you’ve become invisible.
Not because you’ve diminished but because you’ve aged past the point where your appearance serves a function for other people. We do not say that part out loud enough. A woman’s value being tied to her aesthetics has been repackaged and sold in a thousand different ways, especially over the last five years. Be attractive. Stay desirable. Maintain access.
Because what is seen gets valued. And what gets valued gets protected.
So yes, pretty privilege is real. It impacts how you move through the world. It can shape opportunity, relationships, and even perceived competence. Which is exactly why aging can feel so destabilizing. One day, you don't recognize the woman in the mirror, and the gray comes in as it belongs there. Your body stops responding the way it used to.
And if your identity was even partially built on being seen
This part can feel like something has been violently ripped away from you. That is where most messaging tells you to fight it. Lippo it. Face lit it. Botox it.
But what if that was never the assignment, what if the visibility you were taught to maintain was conditional the entire time
When the world stops looking at you the same way, something else opens. You are finally able to take the driver's seat to who you really want ot be. The depth, the drama, and the vibrance are finally able to be center stage. Your comfort and wisdom sparkle.
1. You Start Seeing How Much Was Performance
You begin to clock how much of your life was shaped around perception. How you spoke, how you showed up, what you tolerated. Aging disrupts that loop. Without constant external validation, you are left with something more honest: your own awareness.
2. Fear Becomes Easier to Identify
Decisions that once felt normal start to look different. You can trace where you chose based on desirability, likability, or access. And once you see it, it is hard to unsee.
3. Your Body Stops Negotiating
The same body you once pushed through now has boundaries. Real ones. You cannot override it the same way. And while that can feel frustrating, it is also clarifying. It forces alignment.
4. You Begin to Redefine What Power Actually Is
Power stops being about being chosen, noticed, or validated. It becomes about how you live, what you honor, and what you no longer entertain. There is less performance. More precision.
The Confrontation
Was there a moment you felt the shift
When you realized the world was looking through you instead of at you
What did you do with that
Because this is the part that does not get turned into content
You can spend this chapter trying to get the gaze back
Or you can sit with the reality that you were never fully seen to begin with
Getting Older Isn’t the Loss
Getting older as a woman is not soft. It is not aesthetic. It is not something you package into a morning routine and call healing.
It is a stripping.
Of illusion. Of performance. Of who you had to be to survive.
And here is the part that might sting
Some of you are not grieving youth You are grieving that you never got to live while you had it
That you were performing the entire time Being chosen instead of choosing Being seen instead of actually being known
So now what
Because you cannot go back And you cannot unsee it
You can only decide if this next chapter will still be about proving Or if it will finally be about living
Not for an audience Not for validation Not even for redemption
The idea of the strong Black woman is often framed as something to aspire to. It signals resilience, capability, and an ability to withstand pressure. For many, it becomes an identity early, reinforced by family, community, and professional environments.
Over time, that identity becomes less of a choice and more of a default. It shapes how you respond to stress, how you show up in rooms, and what is expected of you without being explicitly stated. Strength is not just something you access when needed. It becomes the baseline.
That shift is subtle, but it changes how you relate to yourself. What begins as resilience can turn into a fixed way of operating, even when it no longer serves you. When the abnormal becomes normal, we begin to see the cage we are in as a permanent structure, but with this programmed need to defy the odds, we decorate our cages.
Black Women Burnout and the Cost of Performed Strength
There is a cost to being consistently perceived as the one who can handle everything.
Research continues to show that Black women experience higher levels of chronic stress and burnout, often tied to both workplace dynamics and broader systemic pressures. The American Psychological Association has reported that Black women are more likely to experience stress-related health impacts while also being less likely to receive adequate mental health support (American Psychological Association, 2021).
In professional settings, this often translates into being relied upon in ways that are not always visible or formally acknowledged. Being dependable becomes an expectation. Overextending becomes normalized.
For high-achieving women, this dynamic can be even more pronounced. Success reinforces the behavior. The ability to perform under pressure creates more opportunities, but it also creates a pattern that is difficult to interrupt.
At some point, it becomes unclear where your actual capacity ends and where your expectations begin.
High-Achieving Women Burnout and Identity Loss
Burnout in this context is not only about workload. It is tied to identity.
When strength is the primary way you are recognized, it can become difficult to access other parts of yourself without feeling like you are stepping outside of what is acceptable. Rest, uncertainty, or even a shift in direction can feel unfamiliar, not because they are wrong, but because they have not been reinforced.
For many women, professional roles also become closely tied to identity. Recent labor data has shown that Black women have experienced disproportionate job loss in certain sectors, particularly in roles that were already unstable or undervalued (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). When roles shift or disappear, the impact is not only financial. It can disrupt how someone understands their place and value.
This is where the internal tension becomes more visible.
The question is no longer just about what you can do. It becomes about who you are allowed to be.
Strong Black Woman Trope and Emotional Suppression
There is also a relational cost. When we don't allow ourselves to be seen and supported, eventually those who may want to go away. One of the most crushing impacts of the illusion of the strong Black woman is the inability to see oneself as human, thus unable to receive support at the level that one gives. As someone who is personally navigating that journey, this is one of the hardest unlearnings.
Operating from a place where composure and capability are expected can limit how openly you express need, frustration, or uncertainty. Not always because you are unwilling, but because the environment has not consistently made space for it.
This can show up in subtle ways. Filtering your responses. Managing how much you reveal. Anticipating how others will interpret your reactions.
Over time, this creates distance between what you experience and what you express.
It is a sustainable strategy in certain environments. It is not a sustainable way to live.
Areas to Reflect On
As I wrap up, I wanted to leave you with some areas to ponder. As you do so, please do it from a place of deep grace and compassion. The systematic nature of the Strong Black Woman illusion makes it easy to try and focus only on the individual level, as that's exactly how the system was designed, which takes the critical focus on the structure itself.
When was the last time you responded honestly to how you were feeling without adjusting for how it might be received
Where in your life are you being relied on in ways that are expected but not acknowledged
What parts of yourself have you learned to minimize in order to maintain how you are perceived
There is value in resilience. There is value in being capable and steady. Those traits are not the issue.
The issue is when they become the only traits recognized and reinforced, which keeps you from experiencing support and the reality of the human condition.
Expanding beyond that does not mean losing what has carried you. It means allowing yourself access to a fuller range of who you are without reducing it to what is most palatable.
If this resonates, I explore these dynamics more directly on Mystique Femininity. The conversation there goes further into how identity is shaped, maintained, and sometimes outgrown.
