all about self-love and academia. thank you, bell.

As I think about the ways in which my self-love journey is unfolding, I never thought I’d be examining the ways in which I also have to continuously pour as a Black woman in higher education. I simply thought this year, like many years, was a reckoning of sorts. A rise from ashes. But, in actuality, it is not a new start. Just a new direction. My real journey started years ago. In efforts to shield myself from unwarranted abuse, I bottled up in travel, work, and Bible verses. All performative, of course. All routine, of course. And all in hopes of secretly gaining a man. Doing the things that academia doesn’t teach us, but that social media, relationship goals, and ‘femininity’ do. Oh, if only I knew then. That work didn’t matter. That inconsistent hiatuses didn’t matter. That men (definitely) didn’t matter. That every road I take would always and will always…lead to me.

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”

bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

There is a certain kind of cruelty that we’ve been taught to endure as Black women. A loyalty to it. An exhaustion for it. And let’s not forget sacrifice. If I haven’t learned anything else along the way of not only learning how to ‘do’ relationships, but to also keep my head above water in The Academy, is that my life is less about gaining ‘somebody’…and all about making MY body not just a house; but a home. In laying bricks and mortar, and starting over and over, there have been a lot of firsts. I have told myself “I love you” when faced with rejection from men and feelings of inferiority from faculty. I have given myself hugs when I desperately wanted to be held or had a bad day. I have shut work down and given myself permission to do the most radical thing a Black woman can do when faced with overworking. Rest.

We don’t create enough discourse on the importance of Black women radically choosing themselves in the face of ‘anti-racism’, tokenization, inequities, and inadequate funding in academia. Putting ourselves out of harm’s way. It goes without saying that there is also an absence of a sustained focus on true contentment and peace in walking away when you’re just downright fucking exhausted. But in an era where ‘becoming that girl’ is rising and Lil Nas X says what we all want, I encourage Black women to become sacred. To find glory in “No”. To find beauty in something mundane as stretch marks. To affirm anger when diversity, equity, and critical race conversations are met with silence.

“There’s beauty in the struggle.”

-J. Cole

Without a worth ethic of self-love, we are right where society has always wanted Black women to be. Confined to a prison nation. After all, violence against Black women is not just at the hands of the Black men we try so very hard to be loyal to. It is in the eyes of classmates who can’t wrap their heads around the definition of “systemic”. Faculty who don’t ever seem to have the time. Relentless lectures on disparities in the same communities that some, if not most, of us, return to for Thanksgiving.

Beth Richie coined the term ‘prison nation’ to describe America’s ideology, practices, and uses of incarceration to enforce disadvantage in low-income communities. As a result, this ‘prison’ creates barriers for women to find recourse when facing oppression and violence. While Richie critically analyzes physical violence against marginalized Black women, there is a sense of urgency to address the ways in which the prisons of higher education enact harm towards Black girls and women who are faculty and students. If institutions are only committed to increasing recruitment without implementing concordance, means of support, equity, or a seat at the table…how are we to really eat?

Self-love in academia looks a lot like nourishment. Stirring community where vulnerability is met with healing and not gaslighting. In a pot of sisterhood at the end of rainbows, after grievances yield storms. Saying grace before bonding over a warm table. And retreating home with a belly full of gratitude, ease, and needs met.

It is only this sustenance that we find on plates with each other, that we thrive as main dishes. Black women have challenged me in ways when I deemed myself only an appetizer. Have sharpened me like iron so that I remember the question is never, “What do you bring to the table?” Because we ARE the table. We built the table. We put cotton on it. We fed babies at it. We tore it down, rebuilt it, and weren’t paid for it.

The eurocentric and capitalist nature of academia puts Black women at a higher risk of abandoning self-love in exchange for bread crumbs, overly caregiving, and hustling through exhaustion. In order to challenge this…In order to heal generations of plantation-sized domination and oppression at educational institutions that do not educate themselves, we must choose healing over laboring our impoverished spirits. We owe it to ourselves to always recover, to always soothe, to always..decolonize.

There is a balm in Gilead, sis. Salvage it. Spread it. And move past hustle to flow, love, joy,…and rest.