The WELLTH Exchange | April 2026

5 days ago
6 min read

Where healing, joy, wellbeing, and liberation are shared as our true wealth.

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Joy Is Not Soft: What This Moment Is Teaching Us About Black Women, Harm, and Healing

INTRODUCTION: A FAMILIAR MOMENT

Over the weekend (April 3, 2026), many of us watched something that felt familiar. Not surprising or new…it was…familiar. And what a shame that it is.

A respected Black woman, University of South Carolina Women’s Basketball Head Coach Dawn Staley was publicly confronted, spoken to with visible disrespect, and then expected to absorb it with composure.

Later, there was an apology; however, it wasn’t to her.

And if you’ve been paying attention - not just to sports, but to workplaces, boardrooms, classrooms, nonprofits, hospitals, and leadership spaces - you already know:

This is not about one moment. It is very much a pattern.

THE PATTERN WE KEEP BEING ASKED TO IGNORE

Dr. Carey Yazeed named it clearly on Linkedin:

Black women are disproportionately subjected to:

Dismissiveness
Public undermining
Heightened scrutiny
And most consistently — gaslighting

And what happens next is just as predictable.

Despite how we may have been harmed, we are expected to:

Stay composed, stay professional, stay gracious, and stay “above it”, even when we are being disrespected in real time.

What gets reframed as “competition,” “passion,” or “culture” is often something else entirely.

Disrespect. Minimization. And a lack of protection.

THE INVISIBLE LABOR NO ONE NAMES

What doesn’t get talked about enough is this:

Black women are not only experiencing harm, we are expected to regulate ourselves in response to it. We are expected to: manage our tone, manage our reactions ("fix your face"), manage other people’s discomfort, manage the narrative, and manage the room. All while the harm is still happening.

That is labor. That is stress. That is weathering. And over time, it doesn’t just live in our thoughts. It lives in the body:

Tight shoulders
Shallow breath
Mental fatigue
Constant alertness

As I reflected in last month’s newsletter, many of us have become so accustomed to carrying stress that we don’t even recognize the heaviness of the weight anymore.

PAUSE: WHAT IS YOUR WORK ENVIRONMENT ASKING OF YOU?

Before we move on, I want you to pause.

Not to fix anything. Not to analyze. Just to tell yourself the truth. Because one of the most dangerous parts of these patterns is how quickly they become normalized.

Workplace Reflection

Where in my work environment is my authority quietly questioned?
Where am I being asked to “stay professional” over being protected?
When conflict happens, who is expected to regulate the situation?
When harm occurs, is it named — or reframed as “culture,” “tone,” or “miscommunication”?

Internal Reflection

What happens in my body after these interactions?
- Do I tense up?
- Rehearse conversations later?
- Over-explain or shrink?
What emotions am I managing on behalf of other people?
Where have I mistaken self-silencing for professionalism?

Truth-Telling

What am I carrying that was never mine to hold?
What would change if I stopped over-functioning in environments that don’t feel safe?
Where do I actually feel supported — not just tolerated?

JOY, REDEFINED

When we talk about joy, it’s often misunderstood.

It gets reduced to:

Lightness
Positivity
Escape

But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Joy is not pretending harm didn’t happen. Joy is not emotional bypassing. Joy is not silence. Joy, in this context, is something much more intentional.

It is refusal.

Refusal to let systems that harm you dictate your interior life. Refusal to emotionally surrender. Refusal to make exhaustion your baseline. Because oppression does not only target policies.

It targets:

Your nervous system
Your sense of self
Your imagination of what is possible

It tries to convince you that constant stress is normal. That depletion is the cost of success. That survival is enough. And that is what we refuse.

JOY AS DISCIPLINE

We don’t experience joy automatically. It is a practice. It is a decision you return to — especially in environments that do not offer you ease. It looks like:

Protecting your energy when everything is asking for access
Interrupting cycles of overexertion
Letting your body come out of constant defense
Creating moments of softness in hard environments

Some practices build energy:

Community
Movement
Creative expression
Organizing

Some practices restore energy:

Silence
Rest
Water
Distance
Being around people who don’t require translation

Both matter. Because the goal is not just to feel better. The goal is to stay whole while navigating environments that were never designed for your well-being.

WHAT THIS MOMENT REVEALS

What we saw with Coach Dawn Staley was not isolated. It was a public example of something many Black women navigate privately, every day. Being highly visible, highly competent, and still… not fully respected or protected. And still expected to manage it gracefully.

So we build something else. We build our own safe places, that may look like sister circles, group chats, quiet support systems, intentional spaces like WELLTH Labs. All of these spaces are where we don’t have to explain, we don’t have to shrink, we don’t have to perform strength. That is not extra. It’s actually necessary infrastructure for survival and healing.

PRACTICE: REFUSAL IN REAL TIME

This month, don’t focus on “finding joy.” Focus on where you can refuse.

Notice when your body tightens
Notice when you override your own needs
Notice when you stay silent to maintain comfort

Then ask, “What would it look like to not carry this? And choose one small act of refusal. Step away. Say less. Rest without earning it. Reach out to someone safe. Let your body soften. Not because everything is okay. But because:

Those who would try are not allowed to take everything from you.

CLOSING

In a world that asks Black women to absorb everything… What does it look like to give back only what is not ours to carry? Because joy, for us, has never been luxury. It has always been strategy, protection, and medicine.

SHARE + REFLECT

Forward this to someone who needs language for what they’ve been feeling
Sit with the reflection questions this week
Notice what shifts when you stop carrying what isn’t yours

PLAYLIST: “Joy Is Not Soft”

A one-hour soundscape for regulation, reflection, and return. Link to listen on Spotify.

Solange – “Cranes in the Sky”
Jazmine Sullivan – “Masterpiece (Mona Lisa)”
Kendrick Lamar – “Alright”
Tems – “Free Mind”
Nina Simone – “Feeling Good”
Ari Lennox – “BMO”
India.Arie – “I Am Not My Hair”
Sampha – “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano”
Burna Boy – “Common Person”
Ledisi – “Anything For You”

SPOKEN WORD: “You Will Not Have All of Me”

You can have the meeting.

You can have the title.

You can have the performance review

and the expectations

and the deadlines stacked like bricks on my back.

But you will not have all of me.

You will not have the part of me that smiles big and laughs loud when I’m with my people.

You will not have the softness I reserve for safe spaces.

You will not have my full nervous system locked in survival so you can feel comfortable.

I see the pattern now.

The way I’m expected to absorb impact and call it professionalism.

The way I’m asked to regulate the room while the room disrespects me.

The way silence is rewarded, lies are considered truth, and truth is labeled disruption.

But I am learning a new practice.

Not shrinking. Not performing. Not proving.

Refusing.

Refusing to let this place define my worth. Refusing to let stress rewrite my body. Refusing to give what was never earned.

I will do my work. And I will not abandon myself to do it.

Because I come from people who survived worse than this and still found joy in the middle of it.

And I understand now…

That joy was never weakness.

It was strategy.

So no - you will not have all of me.

CLOSING

Joy is not soft because it is not passive. It does not ask for permission. It does not wait for conditions to improve. It is an active, ongoing decision to remain connected to yourself in environments that benefit from your disconnection. When everything around you is asking you to shrink, to silence yourself, to absorb more than is yours - joy becomes the moment you pause and say, this is where I stop carrying what does not belong to me.

And that is what refusal looks like in practice.

Refusal is not always loud. It doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it is quiet and deeply internal. It is the moment you choose not to rehearse the conversation again in your head. The moment you let your shoulders drop instead of holding tension all day. The moment you decide that your worth is not up for negotiation in a room that has already misread you. Refusal is choosing not to abandon yourself - even when the environment makes that feel like the easiest option.

So when we say joy is resistance, what we are really saying is this:

Joy is the evidence that you did not give everything away. That you kept something sacred. That you chose yourself...again and again...in a world that rarely does.

And that choice, especially for Black women, is not small.

It is discipline. It is protection. It is power.

And it is ours.

Experience WELLTH | April 2026

Where healing, resistance, and Black wellbeing are practiced — not just discussed.