October Thoughts

I have so many thoughts upon the relaunch of Bloom Fiercely. It is surreal to be sitting in this moment in my life. I don’t think I ever really believed this would happen. Looking around at the political landscape it seems a little strange to start a new business venture. I want to share a bit about why Bloom Fiercely and why now.

There is truly only one thing I care about…Black women having every resource and support they need to build the life they want for themselves. I have worked in women’s and children’s retail, built programming for seventh to twelfth grade girls, and customized systems for small and midsize nonprofits. Through all those experiences I have seen how deeply these systems were never built to support Black women. These systems will always extract as much labor for as little reward as possible. They will require Black women to shave off pieces of themselves to accept the constant dehumanization. This is what happened to me and my peers. After almost a decade of trying to make peace with the war of existing within these systems, I realized that there is no argument that you can present to the people in power to convince them of your inherent dignity. 

I, of course, did not arrive at this conclusion in isolation. It was in conversation with other women IRL as well as sitting in the writings of those who have walked before me. In this process, the only encouragement I have found has been in the community of women. Bloom Fiercely exists to connect Black women with other Black women. Since we do not have to prove our worthiness to each other, we get to pour our energy into the work. In creating this network of support, we get to focus on what we are actually good at. Let’s circulate resources within the community for the areas in which we do not excel and double down in our zone of genius.