Thee Good Hearted Woman

Does anyone else continue to see the good in people even when all they ever show you is the bad? Just me, oh okay. Sometimes I wish I was able to see through the bullsh*t in the beginning because it would save me from a lot of heartache in the end. It took me so long to realize that it is not our job to save people nor is it our job to fix people. We shouldn’t allow people to soak all the life out of us, until we have nothing left to give. The world has givers and takers, God blessed me with a giving heart. A heart that gets so much joy by supplying others with happiness. 

Maybe that’s partly due to the Aquarius in me or maybe it’s the Black woman in me. Society normalized Black women taking care of everyone else but never taught us how to choose ourselves. How to love and respect ourselves enough to say no. Naturally women are nurturers, caregivers, lovers etc. but what if I wanted to be selfish and just take some time to love myself, nurture myself and care for myself? A line that really resonated with me in Capital B, Capital F is when Cooper said, “Loving Black girls is complicated, but loving oneself in a world where there is always someone ready to do you harm is even harder” (Cooper, 30). 

However, I want you to think a little deeper and allow yourself to consider the possibility of Black children, girls and women loving themselves out loud and no longer putting themselves second for the convenience of other people. What if we normalized Black women and women in general taking all that they pour into others and started pouring it back into ourselves, would that really be so terrible? 

That’s the question I have been trying to solve since the coronavirus took the world by storm. Once everything shut down, it allowed me to see things more clearly. It allowed me to see that there were people in my inner circle using me to better themselves but not actually contributing anything into my life. On page 24 Cooper reminds us that, “It’s not that people don’t love you, it’s that they don’t have the same capacity to love as you do. Most people are doing the best they can ” (Cooper, 24). I believe this is some powerful advice and the sooner we realize this the better off we will be. Sometimes people just aren’t able to love you in the way you deserve. Now I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing but you have the power in deciding if you’re willing to teach someone how to love you or moving on to someone who already knows how.