Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here.

And today we're going to talk about how to opt into moving in silence.

Now I know, I've done a podcast before about opting out of silence. And that was

all centered around the really open secret about how we as black women are more likely to

experience domestic and sexual violence and how keeping ourselves silent about the pain and violation

that we have experienced as a community is unhealthy and imprisons us into struggle.

But that's not what we're talking about today. Today we were talking about something different.

We are talking about moving in silence in the context of learning how to keep some things private

and just for yourself. We're going to learn this in the context of your personal goals, financial

goals, and career goals.

Here's what I've learned and was hard for me to kind of even process.

Is that telling everyone, everything about your life is a trauma response.

And I'll never forget the day I read that. I think it was Dr. Thima who wrote that,

who's one of my favorite folks to listen to and watch in spaces. It hit me because while I knew on some level that was true, I had never formed the words that way.

Growing up, I always overshared everything.

There wasn't at least somebody who didn't know what was going on at all times.

I could not keep things to myself.

Now to be clear, I could hold other people's secrets and things that they asked me to keep

in confidence, but I struggled to keep my own. If I was making a professional move, I would tell

far too many people before I made it. I would talk about a relationship that I kind of knew was going

nowhere and was way too early to be talking about. I would tell people. I would talk about my

...