Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here.

And today I want to talk to you about the power of resilience.

We've all had things in our lives that has caused us pain, that has been

difficult to overcome. Or if we haven't ourselves had that, which I believe all of us have,

we've watched people around us go through difficult circumstances and find ways to

overcome it. And a part of the way that people do that

is via resilience. And I've heard resilience talked about in a lot of different places and a lot of

different ways. It's become kind of a thing that shows up in our culture. And I thought today

we would talk about what resilience is, what it's not, and how we can build tools for

resilience versus some of the ways that we have been conditioned as black women to be the strong

black woman and how resilience isn't the same as the myth of the strong black woman.

And so I want to talk a little bit

about that myth and then talk about how we can get further away from that myth, let that go,

and embrace the concept of resilience, which will get you through a lot more hardship and leave

room for a lot more growth. Growing up, I really bought into the strong black woman myth.

And how could I not? How could we not as black women? And we are bombarded. Like, everywhere you go,

we celebrate women who are tough in the face of adversity, who overcome.

But a lot of times the way that that's depicted is like it's a woman who overcomes on her own.

It's a woman who doesn't necessarily express her feelings or show her feelings.

She just takes what's happening to her and pushes through.

There isn't a lot of room in the myth of the strong black woman for softness and being gentle with yourself and compassion. It just doesn't

leave space for that. Instead, you are forced to ignore your needs to take care of others.

...