I was in a meeting once. Years ago, different life. And I had the thing. The answer. The read on the situation that was right. I could feel it the way you feel it when you know.

I waited to say it. I turned it over a few more times. Made sure. Softened the framing. And then someone else said it. Less carefully. Without the softening. And the room moved.

I thought about that meeting for a long time afterward. Told myself I was being too hard on myself. That I'd speak up faster next time. I didn't, though. Not for years. Not really.

I've been thinking about that meeting again lately, in the context of this project, and what I understand now that I didn't then: I wasn't being cautious. I was being trained.

Not by that meeting. By everything before it.

There is a particular kind of permission-waiting that gets socialized into Black women. Specifically, and I want to be specific about it, because the specific version matters. It is not simply "women aren't encouraged to be bold." It is a more layered thing than that.

It is the years of learning to read rooms so accurately that you can predict exactly how your words will land before you say them, and adjusting accordingly. It is the accumulated data of what happens when you are too much, too direct, too certain. It is the calculus of visibility that becomes second nature: how much is enough, how much is too much, and who is watching.

It is, to put it plainly, a whole conditioning program. And it runs deep.

So when I tell you that audacity is the project I'm working on this year, I want you to understand why that word is not small for me. It is not a lifestyle concept. It is not content strategy. It is a direct response to a specific training I received, that we received, that said: wait. Let someone else go first. Make sure you're sure. Don't be too much.

The version of audacity that gets sold in personal development spaces is usually framed as a personality upgrade. Like boldness is a trait some people have and others need to acquire. But that's not what I'm finding. What I'm finding is that the women around me, the ones in their late 30s and 40s, the ones who are readers and savers and the friends people call when things go sideways, are not lacking boldness. We are carrying decades of learned restraint.

That is a different problem. And it requires a different kind of work.

It doesn't require becoming someone louder. It requires recognizing the training for what it is, and making a different choice, deliberately, repeatedly, in rooms big and small. Including rooms where the only person watching is yourself.

Waiting for permission is a habit. It is a very old, very practiced habit. And for a lot of us, it was the most rational response to the environment we were actually in.

We are not in that environment anymore. Or we don't have to be.

That's what I mean when I say audacity is a hard ask. It's not that we can't do it. It's that we've been doing the opposite for so long that the doing-it feels like the risk, and the waiting feels like the safe thing.

The safe thing isn't always the right thing.

I'm learning that in real time. Slowly. Without a highlight reel.

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