Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Today I want to start with a question.

Are you hiding?

What areas of your life do you think you may be hiding yourself in?

Today I want to talk about the ways that we as black women may hide ourselves, minimize ourselves, our abilities, our strengths, our presence,

just our ability to take up a room and how we may be hiding and don't even realize it.

And then I want to outline three ways to really opt out of hiding and opt into being present and visible and fully stepping

into your life. I would consider myself a pretty outspoken person. I've always kind of been

what I like to call an extroverted introvert in that I'm usually

seen making someone laugh or not afraid to speak up and defend the people I love.

But there was a point in my life where when I wasn't paying attention, I quietly disappeared.

And I didn't recognize myself.

I didn't see myself anywhere.

I had hidden so much of who I was behind a poor job, poor relationship choices,

even letting myself be in poor environments. I realized for all of my

mouthy miss and my loudness and my presence, I was invisible and unrecognizable to myself.

I was hiding. And if you're like me, maybe you don't

realize you've been hiding, or maybe you do and you just don't know what to do about it.

So today, let's talk about the ways we hide. The first area that we may be hiding and not even

recognize it is in our place of work. Think about the first day of work in the job that you're in.

What were you feeling? Were you excited? Were you bringing up brand new ideas or just

thrilled to be there? And then think about maybe the way that you feel about your job now. Maybe you feel

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