A Village of One

Sep 13

4 min read

Closed mouths don’t get fed.

I know that.

I say it all the time.

I just forgot that included me.

A couple months back, I lost someone really close to me. And if you know me, you know I like to be useful. I like to be productive. I like to feel like even when life is happening, I am still doing something meaningful.

So I cried.

I wrote.

I reflected.

And then I kept working.

At the time, I was also planning Therapy Beyond the Couch, an experience I had been thinking about for a long time. I kept creating. I kept planning. I kept moving because everything I was doing felt aligned with the life I said I wanted.

That was the problem.

It looked aligned.

But I was exhausted.

Practice What You Preach

I have always said that one of the reasons I became a good therapist is because I never wanted to preach something I was unwilling to practice.

If I told my clients to set boundaries, I had to learn how to set boundaries.

If I told them to have the uncomfortable conversation, I had to have mine.

If I told them to slow down and listen to what their emotions were telling them, then eventually life was going to give me an opportunity to do the same.

And it did.

A couple months back, I made the decision to postpone the event.

It was hard.

Not because I believed postponing something was actually a failure, but because I had to be honest about why I had pushed myself as long as I did.

I was grieving.

I was stressed.

I was emotionally exhausted.

And I was still trying to perform like everything was fine.

I had to therapy myself.

The Strong One

I think somewhere along the way, a lot of us confused independence with strength.

We celebrate people who can carry everything.

We admire the person who never needs help.

We ask, “How do you do it all?”

And for a long time, I liked being able to answer that question.

I carried a lot.

I could handle a lot.

I was useful.

I was dependable.

I was strong.

That became a badge of honor.

But being capable of carrying something does not mean you are supposed to carry it alone.

I remember having a conversation with my mentor about how Black women, especially, can make everybody else’s emergency our emergency. We put everybody else first, then wonder why we are exhausted.

I knew exactly what she meant.

Because I had done it too.

Still did it.

Even in business.

Even while talking publicly about slowing down, taking care of yourself, listening to your body and being intentional about your life.

I was still doing too much.

The strong one needed help too.

I Had a Village

The hardest part for me to admit was that I actually had help available.

I had an incredible village.

Family.

Friends.

My Caring Conversations team.

People who believed in the event.

People who wanted to support.

Facilitators.

Sponsors.

People who probably would have helped me carry much more of it if I had simply told them what I needed.

I did ask for some help.

I just did not ask for enough.

That realization bothered me because I have always believed closed mouths don’t get fed.

That belief has gotten me far in life.

Ask the question.

Have the conversation.

Say what you need.

Yet somehow, when I needed more support, I still tried to do too much myself.

I had a village.

I was just living like a village of one.

Who Is in Your Village?

A village is not just the people you call when everything falls apart.

It should also include the people who notice when you are carrying too much.

The people who say:

Are you okay?

Do you need to slow down?

Have you rested?

Accountability is not always somebody asking whether you finished the thing you said you were going to do.

Sometimes accountability is somebody telling you to sit down.

Your village should include people who celebrate your growth, but also people who tell you the truth with love. People who challenge you. People who make you laugh. People who can sit beside you when life hurts without needing you to make them comfortable.

And your village does not have to share your last name.

Some of the greatest losses in my life have been people who were not related to me by blood.

They chose me.

They loved me without requiring me to prove my worth.

That matters.

Blood can make you related.

Love makes you family.

Before the Breaking Point

I think that is the biggest lesson I took from that season.

I do not want to wait until things become extreme before I ask for help.

I do not want exhaustion to be the first sign that I need support.

I do not want my body to have to force me to slow down.

And I do not want the people who love me to only find out I needed help after everything has already become too heavy.

There is nothing wrong with being strong.

There is nothing wrong with being independent.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how to handle your business.

But life was never meant to be handled alone.

A village only works if the village knows you need them.

And being supported does not make you less capable.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is stop proving how much you can carry.

Ci Notes

Having a village and allowing yourself to use your village are two different things.

People cannot support the parts of your life you refuse to let them see.

Sometimes we are surrounded by love, help and community, but still operating from an old version of ourselves that learned survival meant figuring everything out alone.

You do not have to wait until you are overwhelmed to speak.

Closed mouths don’t get fed.

That includes yours too.