Black Women Are Not Stepping Off The Sidewalk Anymore

Brown Girl Self-Care

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Listen to the episode from 2020

Link to the free mini quide

In this episode, I share a moment that caught even me by surprise — when I was out walking and found myself shoulder-checking someone who didn’t make space for me on the sidewalk. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t loud. But it was intentional.

And I didn’t apologize.

This story became a reflection on the ways Black women are taught to shrink, to step aside, to stay small — and what it means to finally stop doing that.

I talk about:

What really happened that day on the sidewalk
How that moment helped me see how much I’ve yielded in the past
The truth I didn’t want to admit: it was intentional — and I’m not sorry
The quiet power in holding your ground when you’ve been trained not to
Why taking up space isn’t arrogance — it’s ancestral

This episode is for the Black woman who’s tired of stepping aside — physically, emotionally, or spiritually — just to keep the peace. If you’ve been shrinking and you’re ready to return to yourself, this one is for you.

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Transcript

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0:57.6	Hey, hey, you are listening to the Brown Girl Self Care podcast. My name is Bree. I'm the host of the show,
1:03.5	as well as the founder of Brown Girl Self Care. Brown Girl Self Care is a platform and space of
1:08.1	intentional healing, joy, rest, and abundance for black women.
1:11.2	Let's go ahead and just jump right on into today's episode.
1:15.0	I want to throw it back to an episode I did in 2020.
1:18.6	No, I'm not going to replay the episode, but I do feel like it bears some importance to the topic
1:25.5	that we are discussing today.
1:29.6	What I am talking about today is something that I feel like our ancestors are in the backgrounds of our lives, like hyping us up about.
1:35.7	And, you know, I've talked about this subject several times, and I'm going to talk about it
1:39.1	again today because it is important. And that is taking up space.
1:45.5	Okay, so this week's episode is actually a follow-up to an episode that I did in 2020
1:51.5	where the title of that episode was The World Will Make Space for You.
1:56.9	I will link that in today's show notes because it still bears listening to. Now, I will say that
2:05.3	that episode was recorded five years ago, y'all, five years ago back in 2020. So I'm going to ask
	...

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