I’m Tyra Steverson, founder of 290 Therapy, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, and the author of Dear Burned-Out Black Girl and Dear Burned-Out Black Woman.
Subscribe to my Substack and YouTube channel for more episodes of Dear Burned-Out Black Girl.
You Can Be Authentic and Still Be Graceful
Dear burned-out Black girl, you can be authentic and still be graceful.
For a long time, I think I associated grace with a certain type of woman.
Women like Eartha Kitt. Gladys Knight. Even characters like Betty Boop or Lucy from I Love Lucy.
There was something about women like that. The femininity. The presence. The way they carried themselves. They seemed polished without disappearing inside of the polish.
And being a Black woman in AKA has taught me a lot about that.
Because when you see AKA from afar, you see the pink and green.
You see the pearls.
You see the outfits.
You see accomplished Black women who seem polished to perfection.
But when you actually become a part of the sisterhood, you realize something very quickly.
Behind the pink and green and the pearls, we’re all just girls at the end of the day.
We love a good kiki.
Sometimes we use really explicit language.
Sometimes we say thoughts out loud that probably should have remained thoughts.
We laugh too loud. We have stories. We have histories. We have shit we have survived.
Some of us were raised in the hood.
Some of us are still the girls who got cheated on by our college boyfriends.
Some of us have been married and divorced.
Some of us have experienced domestic violence.
Some of us have endured suffering beyond comprehension.
Some of us have lost our minds and somehow found our way back to ourselves.
And none of that disqualifies us from grace.
We Are Still Human Underneath the Pearls
The human part of us cannot be negotiated away.
You cannot perform your way out of being human.
You cannot accomplish enough, dress well enough, become educated enough, earn enough titles, or perfect your reputation enough to escape the fact that you are still a woman who has lived a real life.
As polished to perfection as we may look in our pink and pearls, we are still women at the end of the day.
Women who have loved.
Women who have been hurt.
Women who have made mistakes.
Women who have survived.
Women who are still becoming.
And I think one of the greatest lessons AKA has taught me is that there is a way to wear your womanhood in stilettos.
Not hide it.
Not sanitize it.
Not pretend it never got ugly.
Wear it.
Life can be painful and uncomfortable and still be as pretty as you allow it to be.
And you get to determine what pretty means to you.
You do not get to determine how other people interpret your beauty.
Some people are only going to see the pearls.
Some people are only going to see the accomplishments.
Some people will see the hood girl.
Some people will see the woman who has been through some shit.
And some people will have enough depth to see all of her at the same time.
I Wish People Could See the Heart of AKA
A lot of women have worked very hard to create the aesthetic people associate with AKA.
But I wish people could also see the heart.
Because underneath the pearls, the reputations, the status, the careers, and the roles are Black women who have chosen to dedicate themselves to service.
And we do that while living real lives.
We handle business while handling heartbreak.
We serve communities while sometimes trying to put ourselves back together.
We show up for each other while navigating marriages, divorces, motherhood, careers, grief, disappointment, reinvention, and everything else that comes with being human.
And somehow, the work continues.
The sisterhood continues.
The service continues.
For generations, Black women have continued choosing to become part of Divine Nine organizations and carry that commitment forward.
That means something to me.
Because sisterhood is not about never getting ugly.
It is about knowing there is still a connection underneath the ugly.
There have been moments when I wanted to pull away.
Moments when I didn’t want to participate.
Moments when I needed distance.
And somehow, I have still been able to find my way home to AKA.
Grace Does Not Require Perfection
That may be the bigger lesson.
You can be a woman who has been through a lot of shit and still be a woman who carries herself with grace.
Those things are not contradictory.
You can be hood and graceful.
You can cuss and be graceful.
You can be loud and graceful.
You can have survived some shit and be graceful.
You can have an ugly season and still create a beautiful life.
You can lose yourself and find yourself again.
You can be soft without pretending you have never had to be hard.
You can wear the pearls without hiding the woman underneath them.
Because authenticity does not cancel out grace.
And grace was never supposed to require you to erase yourself.
Dear burned-out Black girl, maybe the goal isn’t to become some perfectly polished version of yourself.
Maybe it is learning how to carry the fullness of who you are beautifully.
Maybe that is grace.
Keep Building. Keep Becoming.
If you are a Black woman figuring out what it looks like to build a life, career, business, relationships, and identity without losing yourself in the process, come join us inside Hustle & Heal: A Community for Black Women Building and Becoming.
I’ll also be sharing updates and details there about the upcoming Hustle & Heal Summit, so join the community to stay up to date as everything comes together.
Join Hustle & Heal:
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And subscribe to my Substack and YouTube channel for more episodes of Dear Burned-Out Black Girl.
Tyra Steverson, LCPC
Founder, 290 Therapy
