Dear Burned Out Black Girl, Stop Carrying People’s Potential

The exhausting weight of believing you can get blood out of a turnip.

I’m Tyra Steverson, LCPC in Illinois and LPC in Texas, founder of 290 Therapy and creator of Dear Burned Out Black Girl. I’m a therapist, educator, and community builder, and much of my work is centered around Black women learning how to build, heal, lead, love, and become without abandoning themselves in the process.

One of the hardest things about being able to see people deeply is learning that what you see in somebody is not necessarily what they have chosen for themselves.

You can see the leader in her. The business owner. The healed version. The disciplined version. The better partner. The incredible mother. The person who could change her entire life if she would just do the few things that seem so obvious to you.

And because you can see it, you start helping.

Then helping turns into reminding. Reminding turns into pushing. Pushing turns into compensating. You create opportunities. You make introductions. You adjust expectations. You explain the same thing another way. You give grace because you know what she’s been through. You keep believing that eventually something will click.

Baby, you are trying to get blood out of a turnip.

And eventually you’re mad at the turnip.

That’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately.

Some of our resentment isn’t coming from what people have done to us. Some of it comes from the exhausting experience of repeatedly expecting people to become who we have decided they are capable of becoming.

Then we’re offended when they don’t.

How many times do I have to tell you?

Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this opportunity?

Why am I always the one following up?

You could be so much further if you would just—

And there it is.

You could.

Potential.

Potential is seductive because it lets us build relationships with possibilities instead of patterns. We keep responding to who someone could be while their behavior keeps introducing us to who they are choosing to be right now.

That doesn’t mean they’re incapable. It doesn’t mean they’ll never change. It doesn’t even mean you were wrong about what you saw in them.

It means their potential belongs to them.

That’s been an important lesson for me as a therapist, friend, teacher, and leader. I can see something in you without making it my assignment to pull it out of you. I can recognize that you’d be incredible at something without creating the opportunity for you. I can give you access and then watch what you do with it. I can tell you what I see once without spending the next six months trying to convince you to see it too.

Because there is a cost to constantly carrying people’s potential.

Resentment is one of them.

You start believing you’re surrounded by people who disappoint you when, sometimes, you’re surrounded by people who are simply being themselves while you keep negotiating with the evidence.

And that resentment can turn into offense.

After everything I’ve done for you.

But that’s when I have to check myself.

Did this person ask me to carry all of this for them? Did they demonstrate that they wanted what I wanted for them? Or did I see their capacity, become attached to it, and start investing accordingly?

You cannot pour enough into somebody to create desire.

You cannot mentor somebody into wanting something.

You cannot love somebody into readiness.

And you cannot squeeze a turnip hard enough to make it produce blood.

These days, I’m learning to let behavior catch up to potential before I make significant investments in it.

I want to know who shows up. Who follows through. Who participates before there’s a title. Who reaches for the opportunity without needing to be dragged toward it. Who cares about the thing while it’s still small enough that caring about it doesn’t make them look important.

Those are the people I want to pour into.

Not because everybody else is disposable. Quite the opposite. I can love people much better when I’m not secretly resenting them for failing to become the version of themselves I created in my head.

I can let you be where you are.

I can let you want what you want.

I can let you choose differently than I would choose for you.

I can even continue seeing something extraordinary in you.

I just don’t have to carry it anymore.

Maybe that’s one of the quieter ways we stop abandoning ourselves: we stop exhausting our own lives trying to extract something from people that they are not currently offering.

See the potential.

Believe the behavior.

And leave the damn turnip alone.

Whose potential are you exhausted from carrying?

If you’re a Black woman building, healing, becoming, or trying to figure out what any of that looks like without doing it alone, join us in Hustle & Heal: A Community for Black Women Building and Becoming on Facebook.

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