TL;DR

Sometimes what looks like people pleasing, overfunctioning or relentless achievement may be labor performed in response to a deeper verdict: I am not enough as I am.

GET CURIOUS before you judge the strategy.

What has it helped you secure?

What is it costing you?

And what might you choose if you no longer needed to prove your worth?

A reflection on capability, performance, and the exhausting work of proving I am enough

I was reading Become the O.N.E. by Dr. Tiffanie Davis-Henry when I found myself sitting with a question about why unavailable people can sometimes feel so familiar.

My first answer came quickly. My mother was unavailable. My father was unavailable.

Of course unavailable people would feel familiar … but I kept writing … and eventually I wrote something that stopped me: I know how to deal with unavailable people. I don't know how to deal with people who are available because I don't have to perform.

Then came the question I am still sitting with.

Who am I when I don't have to perform?

Because I know how to perform.

I know how to show up.

I know how to be helpful.

I know how to make myself valuable.

I know how to be the one who keeps in touch.

The one who volunteers.

The one who figures it out.

The one who becomes necessary.

I know how to achieve.

I know how to produce.

I know how to give people reasons to keep choosing me.

What I am less familiar with is the possibility that I might be chosen without first making a case for why I deserve to be.

Underneath all of those strategies, I found the verdict.

I am not enough as I am to be loved.

Not enough unless I am helping.

Not enough unless I am producing.

Not enough unless I am achieving.

Not enough unless I am useful.

Not enough unless someone can point to something I have done and say, See. This is why she matters.

I don't think I realized how much of my life I have spent trying to overturn that verdict.

I keep submitting evidence

Achievement has been very good to me.

I've done things I am proud of.

I have received recognition. I have been invited into rooms. I have solved problems. I have helped people. I have built things. I have created things I didn't know I was capable of creating … and sometimes I am genuinely surprised when I do.

There is a moment of, Damn. I did that.

Then almost immediately, I want to hold onto it.

Because what if it never happens again?

What if that was the last time?

What if I need another accomplishment to prove I am still the woman who deserved the first one?

That's the problem with using evidence to prove your worth.

The evidence expires.

Another award.

Another person choosing you.

Another successful project.

Another invitation.

Another compliment.

Another achievement.

Another way of proving the verdict wrong.

And somehow yesterday's evidence never quite settles tomorrow's question.

So you submit another exhibit.

And another.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to overturn a verdict I didn't realize I was still appealing.

And then there is the world

This is where I have to complicate my own story.

Because I know this pattern belongs to me, but I don't believe I invented all of it.

Black women are taught to be capable.

The research language for some of this is gendered-racial socialization. My language for what it can become is capability as social currency.

Dr. Cheryl Woods-Giscombé's research on the Superwoman Schema found recurring expectations among Black women to project strength, suppress emotion, resist vulnerability and dependence, succeed despite limited resources, and take care of others. The women in her original research also described strength as something that helped preserve themselves, their families and communities, even while carrying costs including stress and relationship strain.

Other research examining Black women's gender-role beliefs describes socialization around strength, self-reliance, caretaking, independence and even economic productivity. These expectations are not simply individual personality traits. Researchers locate them within a much longer social and historical context.

That matters.

Because capability has protected us.

Capability has fed families.

Capability has opened doors that were not designed for us.

Capability has created institutions, movements, businesses, ministries and communities.

I am not interested in pathologizing Black women's strength.

I am interested in what happens when being capable becomes confused with being valuable.

Be strong, and you are admirable.

Be useful, and you are needed.

Excel and you become harder to dismiss.

Produce, and you have evidence that you belong … and sometimes the world reinforces the lesson.

In one study of women scientists, 76.9 percent of Black women reported having to prove themselves over and over again, a higher percentage than the other racial groups of women surveyed. Research on professional workplaces has similarly documented what scholars call “prove-it-again” bias, the additional labor required of people who fall outside the image of the supposedly ideal worker to repeatedly demonstrate competence and fit.

So imagine what happens when the world keeps asking a woman for receipts while something inside her is already wondering whether she is enough.

Of course she becomes good at producing receipts.

What if the same strategy follows us home?

This is the part I am getting curious about.

What happens when a survival strategy that makes sense at work follows me into friendship?

Into family?

Into community?

Into romantic relationships?

What happens when being indispensable starts feeling safer than simply being loved?

I can keep the relationship alive.

I can call.

I can help.

I can anticipate what you need.

I can become easier to love.

I can give more.

I can explain myself better.

I can make sure you remember how valuable I am.

I can do something … and doing something offers a kind of control.

Because simply allowing another human being to decide whether they want me requires something much more frightening.

I have to wait.

I have to receive.

I have to trust.

I have to risk discovering that I cannot manufacture someone's capacity to love me.

That may be why unavailable people can feel strangely familiar.

Unavailable relationships give me a job.

There is always something else I can try.

Availability asks something entirely different of me.

Can I stay present when there is nothing for me to earn?

Love or labor?

This doesn't mean relationships require no effort.

Love requires care.

Friendship requires tending.

Community requires contribution.

Partnership requires reciprocity.

There is a difference between participating in a relationship and working to keep it alive.

I am learning to notice that difference.

When I feel myself reaching for the phone again.

When I want to offer something nobody asked me for.

When I start thinking about how I can become more useful.

When I want to fix the discomfort immediately.

When I feel distance, and my first instinct is to work harder.

I am trying not to convict myself for doing it.

I'm trying to GET CURIOUS.

What am I about to do?

What am I afraid will happen if I don't?

What am I hoping this action will secure?

Attention?

Reassurance?

Approval?

Continued contact?

Being chosen?

Belonging?

Then I go underneath the behavior.

What verdict am I trying to disprove?

Maybe it is mine: I am not enough as I am to be loved.

Maybe yours sounds different.

People always leave.

I am too much.

I am forgettable.

I have to be useful to matter.

If I need too much, I will become a burden.

If I stop producing, people will stop valuing me.

Then there is another question that matters deeply to my GET CURIOUS practice: What has this strategy given me?

Because I refuse to shame the woman who learned how to survive.

Overfunctioning gave me something.

Achievement gave me something.

People pleasing gave me something.

Being useful gave me something.

Sometimes it gave me praise.

Sometimes access.

Sometimes connection.

Sometimes safety.

Sometimes control over circumstances where I otherwise felt powerless.

A strategy can have been incredibly effective and still no longer be the way I want to live.

So the next question is: What is it costing me now?

My energy?

My body?

My authenticity?

My time?

My peace?

My ability to know whether someone is actually showing up for me?

Then comes the question I may have to practice answering for a long time: What would I do here if I already believed I was enough?

Not what would a healed woman do.

Not what would an emotionally evolved woman do.

Not what should I do so I can earn an A in boundaries.

Because that could become another performance.

Just: What would I do if I didn't believe this connection depended on my performance?

Maybe I wouldn't send the second text.

Maybe I would.

Maybe I would help because I genuinely wanted to rather than because I was terrified of becoming unnecessary.

Maybe I would say no.

Maybe I would let someone do something for me.

Maybe I would stop trying to turn every gift, accomplishment, or invitation into permanent evidence of my worth.

Maybe I would enjoy the thing while it was happening.

What if I stop working for love?

This question doesn't come with a guarantee. That's probably part of why it scares me.

If I stop doing some of the labor that has kept relationships functioning, I may discover that some of those relationships were dependent on my labor.

Some people may not move toward me when I stop moving toward them.

Some connections may change when I stop supplying all of the energy.

I might find out something I didn't want to know … but I might also finally have enough stillness to see who is actually there.

Who calls.

Who gives.

Who makes room.

Who chooses.

Who stays interested when I have nothing impressive to report.

Who values my presence rather than simply benefiting from my performance … and maybe that is part of unBEAcoming.

Not becoming a woman who never needs reassurance.

Not becoming a woman who never achieves.

Not becoming a woman who no longer cares whether people choose her.

I like winning.

I like creating.

I like contributing.

I don't want to extinguish those things.

I want to know the difference between doing because it is who I am and doing because I am trying to prove I deserve to exist in someone's life.

I want accomplishment to be something I experience, not evidence I have to preserve.

I want giving to come from generosity, not fear.

I want love to contain labor without requiring me to labor for love.

Mostly, I want to know the woman underneath all of the evidence.

The woman who does not have a closing argument prepared.

The woman who does not have another exhibit to submit.

The woman who is no longer appealing the verdict.

Maybe the question isn't simply: What if I stopped working for love?

Maybe it is: Who could I become if I finally believed love did not have to be earned?

Maybe the first step isn't becoming anyone at all.

Maybe it's finally getting curious about who has been here the whole time.

What's in the Pot

This isn't an argument against strength, ambition, achievement, caretaking, or effort in relationships.

It is an invitation to notice what those things are doing for us.

Am I achieving because I want to achieve, or because achievement temporarily quiets a question about my worth?
Am I giving because I want to give, or because being needed feels safer than simply being loved?
Am I tending this relationship, or am I carrying it?

The behavior may look exactly the same from the outside.

The difference is what is underneath it.