23-year-old Adanna Perry is fresh out of college and works as an elementary school teacher. She proudly identifies as a Black feminist and worked as an activist for the rights of Black women while in college. On this episode, she shares how difficult she found adjusting to adulthood once she left the community of sisterhood that formed while in her all-girls’ high school and continued as the friends she made there remained in close proximity to each other. A key difficulty Adanna encountered in post-college life was not having as easy access to this sisterhood once adulthood hit and everyone went their separate ways to start their lives. Adanna struggled to figure out how to assert herself at work without reinforcing the “angry black woman” trope she instinctively knew would be impossible to overcome. Adanna also shares how romantic relationships presented challenges as well because she was committed to being her authentic feminist self in every aspect of life. She discovered that the men who were attracted to her assertiveness and commitment to self didn’t support this self-preservation if it disrupted the narrative of how a black woman should conduct herself in a heterosexual relationship. She reminisces about what she learned from watching her mother put her own needs on the back burner as she supported her husband and cared for her children. Adanna commits herself to centering herself always – even when/if she decides to take on a traditional nuclear family. Out of all the lessons Adanna has learned in this year and a half of “grown up life,” the most important is to acknowledge her own self-worth, absent of her ability to please others. “I’ve learned that my value is not based on what I can do for other people or what I can give them,” Adanna says. “I, myself, am valuable just because I am me.”
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