💛 Receiving Without Shrinking

Yesterday, the Tennessee State University National Alumni Association honored me with an award.

I did not see it coming.

It arrived at the close of Black History Month. A month that reminds us how much we have built without being named. How much we have carried without being thanked.

Standing there, I felt proud.
And unsettled in a way I did not expect.

Because the work did not begin with recognition in mind.
It began with responsibility.
It began with refusing to quit when quitting would have been easier.

There were years when no one was watching.

Years when the rooms I served did not fully see me.

Years when I quietly wondered if the effort was dissolving into air.

And here is the quiet risk I will admit to you:

There were seasons I did not believe my name would be spoken with honor in the very spaces I poured myself into.

It is uncomfortable to confess that.

But it was true.

If you have ever stretched yourself inside a place that did not stretch back, you understand.

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Recognition is a strange thing.

It does not create the work.
It exposes what has already taken root.

Most of our lives are grown this way.

Out of sight.

Not just mine.

Ours.

Formed in kitchens with bills spread across the table.
In classrooms where we overprepared.
In offices where we learned to measure our tone.
In sanctuaries where we prayed for strength and then went back out and found it.

We come from people who built foundations they were not allowed to stand on.

Who kept institutions running that would not fully claim them.

Who mastered restraint because survival required it.

So when something finally turns toward you.

When your name is called clearly.
When something solid is placed in your hands instead of another expectation.

It lands in the body differently.

There is a silence after the ceremony.

The drive home.
The unpinning of the corsage.
The setting down of the award on a table that has seen ordinary Tuesdays.

That is the moment that matters.

Not the applause.

The after.

The question becomes quieter then.

Can you let this be yours?

Can you receive without softening it?
Without rushing to earn the next thing?

Some of us have trained our nervous systems to expect strain.

Ease can feel unfamiliar.

Stillness can feel like a trick.

But I am learning that deserving is not dramatic. It is accumulated.

It is the thousands of decisions no one clapped for. The emails rewritten. The boundaries held. The times you kept your voice steady when you could have burned the whole thing down.

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🕯️ The Becoming Line
Let yourself receive what your quiet years have prepared you for.

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Deserving has weight.

Yesterday, I felt it in my hands.

Not because I chased it.

But because I remained intact long enough to meet it.

Black History Month closed yesterday.

I brought the award home and set it down.

The house was quiet.

And there I was just standing, looking at something that once felt impossibly far away.

And what moved me most was not the honor itself.

It was the evidence.

That the unseen years were not empty.

That the staying left a mark.

That work done in the dark does not disappear.

If you are in your own quiet season right now, I hope you understand something without me needing to persuade you.

Nothing faithful evaporates.

Some things are simply gathering substance.

And when they reach you, they feel less like surprise.

More like a reward.