Internal Chaos. External Success.

THE MOMENT I ACCEPTED SUCCESS WAS KILLING ME

We wear success like clothing. All dolled up in awards and trophies. Accessorized with titles and accolades. Draped in false definitions of worth, identity, and purpose.

Until one day, we wake up and realize our clothes have holes in them. Everything reeks of rot. Soul-crushing destruction from the inside out.

That's when you ask yourself: What the fuck am I doing? Or better: Who the fuck am I?

I had these moments often, riding the train to work.

Get off at my station. Walk up the stairs. Stop for coffee or matcha. Enter the office building. Ride up to my floor. Smile on the outside. Die slowly on the inside.

On paper, I've had dream jobs. The kinds of places where you mention where you work and people say "Oh, you work there" with that tone — part awe, part dismay. That "you made it" reaction.

Technically, I did make it. Whatever making it is supposed to mean. A career fighting poverty, making the world better. Getting paid well to do it. Living in a beautiful apartment with a pool and gym, just like I always wanted.

But in my soul? I was a visionary without space to thrive. Silencing myself to stop making waves. Flatly not being Lori Boozer.

I had left Lori on a shelf in her 20s when I got the message that who I was and who I needed to be to achieve success as a Black woman were at odds with each other.

Whether or not that message was true.

The early years were about learning to code-switch. Exhausting. Appearing "presentable" — relaxed hair, pearl earrings. Exhausting. Outworking everyone who didn't look like me to be "chosen." Even more exhausting.

By the time I got to my office, code-switching was gone. I decided not to play by rules I didn't help create.

But the internal conflicts were loud. The external friction was louder.

Like two different languages trying to understand each other without a translator.

I was wearing big vision. The world around me was often dressed up in status quo.

Beneath the surface, it wasn't moving the needle enough for me.

I wanted strategic collaboration, autonomy, space to build. I got collaboration that disregarded people's strengths and ideas, executed without real direction.

And in my most weakened mental state — after decades of "never letting you see me sweat" — girl, the sweat was dropping like a midnight hot flash.

I didn't have the tools to metabolize the emotions this dissonance brought.

So I did what most of us do: turned it inward.

More agitated. On edge. Misunderstood. Dismissed.

Before long, depression and anxiety — what I call the twin flames of dysregulation — made themselves at home in the center of my heart.

Then came serious clinical-level burnout. Exhausted enough to need a hospital bed.

There's the dissonance that happens when you're a police officer who knows you're meant to be a singer.

And then there's the silent dissonance you don't know is there when you're doing work that technically speaks to your soul, but everything else about how you exist in it is completely misaligned.

It's like being an out-of-tune instrument in the wrong orchestra. A double-whammy.

I was burning out repeatedly because I was pouring everything I had into work that wasn't quite me, in spaces that didn't get me, with people who didn't speak my language.

Contorting to over-perform excellence. Believing, as I was taught to believe, that excellence was currency.

All of this on top of being a Black woman constantly repudiated by society. On top of years of relentlessly climbing the wooden ladder out of poverty.

But what condition was my car in? Hubcaps falling off. Gas light constantly blinking. Smoke out of the exhaust.

I was winning on the outside and losing on the inside. And losing the inside game felt like the price of admission to this capitalist life.

But this dissonance is like an out-of-body experience that festers. It's a symptom of all the other tolls a Black woman has to pay on the road to fake freedom.

Though we have fertilized this soil, we have to separate from ourselves at a soul level to have any hope of fitting into the American success model.

After my hospitalization, I took about a month of leave, but I was eager to prove I was still myself. Truthfully, I feared I had caused some kind of permanent damage by ignoring the mental and physical warning signs in my body.

And in some ways, it did change me. My nervous system could no longer tolerate stress the way it had before. Maybe for the better.

I can no longer grind myself to the bone. Not physically. Not mentally. Not emotionally. Not spiritually.

My body called for balance. Integration of my soul into how I express myself in this world.

With age and all the changes that take place — particularly as a woman — grinding is absolutely out of the question.

A lot of us are waking up to this life-saving realization. A lot of Black women, in particular, are choosing to practice rest. Some of us have been forced to.

But in the depths of laying down my burdens, I picked up the truth of my sacred being.

Black women are sacred.

The only debt we owe is to ourselves. To live healthy, live well. To be in the full power and truth of who we are. To permit ourselves to express it. To choose if and when we ever want to save a single soul that isn't our own.

Our sacredness ordains us to be successful. But success without alignment isn't success at all.

It's just survival in better clothes.

Live: aligned with who you truly are, not who you think you should be.

Give: yourself permission to question what success means to you.

Trust: that your discomfort is information, not weakness.

Be: honest about the cost of misalignment.

Honor: your sacred being over external validation.