The Undoing: Making Room for My Authentic Voice
A black writers journey to self-discovery
Photo by Badiana Badio Eckstrom
My mind was a mosh pit of ideas. Each one vying for attention, screaming to be heard. It was a symphony gone horribly wrong, a cacophony that rendered me utterly paralyzed. Days turned into weeks, self-imposed deadlines loomed, and the well of creativity I usually drew from ran bone dry. This wasn’t writer’s block, it was a complete system overload.
Desperate, I did something I rarely allowed myself — I asked for help. Therapy had always felt like a foreign land, but with each session, a light began to pierce the fog. My therapist, with gentle nudges and well-placed questions, helped me untangle the mess. It was like a mental excavation, uncovering the root of my procrastination — fear. The fear of not being good enough, of rejection, of my words not resonating.
The penny dropped. Procrastination wasn’t about laziness, it was a self-preservation tactic, a way to shield myself from potential failure. But that quote, the one my friend shared from Iyanla Vanzant’s “Until Today,” resonated deeply. Letting go, it said, made room for a new vision.
And so, in this season of my life, I decided to label it my “UNDOING.” It was time to shed the negativity that subconsciously shaped me for so long, to dismantle the limiting beliefs that held me back. It was an undoing of self-doubt, of fear, of the stories I told myself that kept me small.
With each layer I peeled back, space opened up. Space for creation, for evolution, for growth. My words, once trapped in a tangled mess, began to flow freely. They found new channels, connecting ideas in ways I never thought possible. It was as if the universe itself was cheering me on, waiting for this moment of clarity.
I can almost hear the world screaming with me, in agreement, in validation: “Yes, this is it!” This is the writer I was always meant to be, the one who creates from a place of honesty and vulnerability. The undoing wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. It was the fertile ground from which my authentic voice could finally take root.
