Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here.

And you know what no one tells you about softness?

It's that softness alone doesn't redesign your life.

It protects your humanity and that matters.

But if you're waiting for the world to rearrange itself because you did all this inner work,

I need to tell you what I learned the hard way.

This episode isn't about going soft or going hard.

It's about what you build around yourself while you're staying in the softness.

Softness protects your humanity, but it doesn't save your entire life.

I know this from experience, and I want to tell you a little bit of a vulnerable story.

Let's fast forward a few years ago, and let me tell you what it looked like when I was doing everything, quote, unquote, right.

I took a job that was basically in its infancy stage. It didn't even exist the year prior. And it had congressional oversight attached to it. It had some lawsuits. And I was brought in to basically stabilize a big problem at an agency. And my budget was

basically a toothpick. And they were telling me, here, use your skills and build the Taj Mahal.

An impossible task that I made possible.

I grew that budget from $500,000 to $3.6 million.

I built a team of me, one, and by the time I left a few years later, I had expanded the

staffing up to a dozen.

I helped rewrite legislation that changed the workplace.

And I was tapped nationally and internationally as an expert.

But here's what I got for all of that.

The first time I got my evaluation, after moving heaven and earth, I was initially given a 2% raise.

...