Thoughtful reflections on anxiety, Black parenting and beauty
It’s 7 am and you’re checking your balance for the third time since you woke up. There’s no bill due today. No transfer waiting to bounce. The number is fine. It was fine when you checked it at 11 pm
Every few months, a headline resurfaces. Some fifty-something actress, usually White, is praised for “ageing like fine wine,” her skin held up as proof that the right serum, the right regimen, the right discipline can outrun time itself. The comments
Black hair and beauty standards found me long before I had the words for them. The smell of hot comb and Vaseline belongs to my granny’s kitchen, not my mum’s. I was six, maybe seven, sat on a chair pulled
Co-parenting as a Black parent is something nobody plans for. You had a version of this in your head once. One home. One bedtime routine. Both of you in the same kitchen at 7 am, bickering gently about whose turn
Did I actually do that, or did I just not stop long enough to notice I hadn’t? Reading not your thing today? Press play below. That thought arrives at odd times. Loading the dishwasher. Sitting at a red light. Ticking
The school calls it behaviour. You call it your child. This one’s available as audio too. Press play below. Two different words for the same eight-year-old. One of them comes with a file. A record of incidents. Language like disruptive,
The influence of media beauty standards often begins quietly. There’s a moment most of us have had, standing in front of a mirror, doing the maths. Comparing. Measuring something against a version of ourselves that doesn’t actually exist anywhere, except
There’s a particular kind of tired that doesn’t come from your own life. You didn’t lose anyone. You weren’t there. And yet you scroll through the news, and something in your chest tightens anyway. You close the app, then open
There’s a version of this conversation where I tell you that Eurocentric Beauty Standards are unfair, you nod, and we both move on with our day. That’s not the conversation I want to have. I want to talk about the
You know the feeling. Your child comes home and says something small. A comment from a teacher. A rule that seems to only catch them. A hairstyle being questioned or sent to the office. On its own, none of it
These gendered parenting fears often remain unspoken, but they shape the way parents understand safety, risk, and protection differently for sons and daughters. Sit in enough case reviews, enough strategy meetings, enough kitchens where a parent is trying to explain
There’s a version of anxiety triggers and emotional reactions that gets talked about a lot: crowded rooms, loud noises, certain smells that pull you straight back to somewhere you didn’t want to go. Those are real, and they matter. But
There’s a version of your body that some part of the world, at some point in history, would have called perfect. You’ve probably never met her. She keeps changing shape. That’s the quiet tension underneath most of what women are
Most articles about anxiety are written for the version that feels manageable: the pre-exam nerves, the mild flutter before a big meeting, or the moment of uncertainty before something important. The usual advice is familiar: breathe deeply, go for a
Black Teen Safety often begins with a quiet calculation that happens in the mind of almost every Black parent, guardian, aunt, uncle or big cousin who’s raising a teenager. It’s small. It passes in a second. Your child says they’re
Relational Trauma Recovery begins with understanding the exhaustion that comes from being close to someone while still feeling the need to protect yourself. It is a particular kind of tired that comes from bracing for something to go wrong, not
Look at the Black men in your life. Their hair grows thick, coiled and healthy, largely left alone. Then look at your own hairline, or what’s left of it. Something in you knows the comparison isn’t fair. You make it
There’s a phrase that gets passed down before anyone properly explains it. Sell out. You hear it long before you understand it. Somebody’s cousin gets a fancy job and changes how they talk on the phone. Somebody’s neighbour moves to
