Self Worth

Content note: this post discusses strangulation, sexual violence, and domestic homicide. If it feels like everyone is suddenly talking about strangulation, it is not your imagination. Police departments are reporting …

updated from September 24, 2025 Too often, when a woman dares to speak up about her own safety needs, she is shamed. Other women tell her she’s “overreacting,” “paranoid,” or …

How we slowly surrender our boundaries, judgment, and needs, and what it means to begin returning to ourselves. There is something about Nina Simone singing I Wish I Knew How …

12 ways women are pressured, persuaded, and sometimes punished for refusing to organize their lives around men. Women are human beings in our own right. Yet across cultures, religions, families, …

 updated from Sep 28, 2025  Survival is one type of strength. Healing is another. We heal the things we never should have had to survive in the first place.  Respect …

🖤 1. Demanding Grace While Denying Ours Black women are often expected to extend endless empathy, understanding, and forgiveness—especially to Black men navigating racism, trauma, or systemic stress. But when …

I have spent more than 30 years working with women and children who have experienced abuse. And one of the things that experience has taught me is that people are …

If someone can convince you that speaking about mistreatment is worse than the mistreatment itself, they have found a powerful way to protect those responsible. In 2017, when Chimamanda Ngozi …

Emotional abuse can be difficult to explain in a society that struggles to respect women’s safety boundaries in the first place. So much of emotional abuse involves someone knowing what …

Why women’s refusal, independence, and desire for safety are so often treated as offenses against men. There is something deeply troubling about a man hearing a woman say no and …