To the black girl who struggles with self-worth,
Your blackness comes with an unfortunate legacy of trauma. And in that historical trauma, girls like you have been silenced and forbidden to recognize the greatness inside you. Today, mainstream beauty standards hardly embrace girls who look like you yet glorify girls who look like you. When asked if your particular black life matters, your country declares that all lives do. And amongst the shame, twisted beauty standards, and public disregard for your life, you struggle to find self-worth.
Black Girl Magic is the uplifting enchantment that attaches itself to every part of your life. It calls you to walk queenly in your divinity, although sometimes, you don’t feel like magic. Sometimes these feelings of unworthiness make you feel like a foreigner in your own life.
Though, there is hope--a hope that’s carried black girls like you for generations. The solution to your lack of self-worth doesn’t require you to buy expensive things to mask the unworthiness. It doesn’t beg you to change the way you talk. It doesn’t ask that you change your hair or clothes. The solution requires you to reach down into that trauma and grasp the magic that lives inside you.
This letter isn’t meant to force radical self-worthiness; rather, assure you that there’s space for your challenging emotions because there’s magic in every piece of you. There’s magic in your feelings of unworthiness. In your unsteadiness. In your doubts. In your pains. In your fears.
Sit with yourself while you honor these aches. Examine the cracks of your life with a gentle love. Cultivate unity between your heart’s desires and your daily actions, and you will drown out the noise of other’s expectations. May you know that the meaning you search for in other’s validation rests in you. There’s a small voice inside you that wants to shine, that wants to feel worthy.
As a black girl who struggles with self-worth, you likely deal with shame and feelings of inadequacy daily. You’re aware that the world sees you through a filtered lens that often denies your beauty, grace, and power. And this awareness can be a crippling force that attacks your sense of self-worth.
It can seem like your blackness is plagued by pain and uncertainty. But if you lean into every pain, every uncertainty, you can find your worthiness. May you also find your way, your voice, your power, and revel in the possibilities that come with acknowledging your pains and fears. In the everlasting trauma of your blackness lives a black girl who is worthy of it all.
Sincerely,
A black girl who struggles with self-worth
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