Being Too Much While Not Enough

As Principal of Kindred Communications, I work with organizations committed to equity and social justice—helping them shape language, clarify purpose, and communicate with integrity. This series grows from that same commitment: to make meaning, invite dialogue, and hold space for what often goes unsaid in this work.

People cross oceans and wade through hundreds of tourists at a time to catch a glimpse of her. Yet, I’ve heard the same feedback from almost everyone I know who’s beheld her. The portrait is soooo small you could easily miss it (except for the swath of voyeurs surrounding her). She is priceless, yet her face gives them nothing. No matter how long they stare, the woman refuses to explain herself–refuses to be brighter, softer, or more dramatic than she already is. She is the Mona Lisa, and she endures the devotion and the disappointment in equal measure, carrying both without apology.

I, by no means, am the Mona Lisa. But I understand the math.

You see, despite being mild-mannered and introverted by nature, I’ve been told I am too much. It’s not always in those words, mind you—sometimes it’s a pause after I speak, a sidelong glance during the meeting, a quick pivot to someone else’s opinion after I’ve offered mine. Sometimes it’s a backchannel conversation that never quite reaches me directly. Sometimes it’s a smile that doesn’t touch the eyes.

The truth of the matter is, despite my temperament, if I am around the table, even hanging off the edge of it, and there is a disconnect between the stated goal of justice and equity and the practices and words being spoken, I will call it out. Plain and simple. Every time. What I will also do is give every drop of my spirit, including the pain, the joy, and my creativity, to lead, build, create, guide, and nurture, driving each project and endeavor forward. The labor is welcome. The truth-telling, eh–not so much.

And I know I am not alone.

There are so many of us—Black women who’ve been told in quiet ways and not-so-quiet ones that we are a bit too much to take in all at once, that our clarity is inconvenient, our memory too long, our insistence on justice somehow out of place even in rooms that claim to be built for it. We’ve learned to read the shift in energy when we speak plainly. We’ve learned to parse silence.

But we also know our worth. We’ve known it all along. We hold it in our posture, in our humor, in the way we mother each other through the hard weeks and still show up to give our best to a world that does not always reciprocate.

Today is Juneteenth.

And while the nation marks the day with flags and headlines, and sometimes sales, I am reflecting on the layers, the women.

I guarantee you that on June 19, 1865, when the whispers of freedom finally reached Galveston, Black women were not standing still, waiting. We were already juggling fieldwork, the trauma of what had been done to our bodies, and the raising and protecting of our own children, the care of children who were not our own, and the holding together of families torn apart. Community. The announcement came late, but we were already in motion.

We have been expected to be strong for so long that it has ceased to sound like a compliment. It’s become an expectation, a baseline, a role we never auditioned for but are never allowed to step away from.

We have been strong. But strength is not just the labor we give. It’s also the truth we speak. The questions we ask. The refusal to pretend that justice is present when it is only being staged.

We were the ninety-two percent who voted for democracy when it was hanging by a thread. And that thread is fraying to the point of breaking because a Black woman was, once again, deemed Too Much and Not Enough.

Too much clarity–too much command–too much of a mirror.

Not enough polish–not enough diplomacy–not enough willingness to play along.

The math never changes.

We are the ones who sit through meetings that would not move forward without our clarity, who fix the broken parts of programs, who mentor, absorb, translate, interpret, and deliver—not just once but again and again. And still, when the credits roll or the promotions are granted, we are rarely centered in the story.

And I know this because I’ve lived it.

I have led, built, created, strategized. I’ve shaped language so that it carries both clarity and care, guided others toward stronger truths, lifted what was too heavy for one person to hold and carried it anyway.

Yet, in others’ organizations, I was trusted with the work, but not the power. I was never truly invited to prosper. The titles stopped just short. The opportunities hovered just out of reach. The praise came sometimes, but the power never followed.

So I made something of my own. Not out of spite. Not out of desperation. Out of precision. Out of purpose.

I now work with Kindred souls and Kindred missions through my firm—those who listen, even when it’s uncomfortable, and who make space. Not too much space. Not too little. Just the right amount for who I really am.

So when people now say Too Much or Not Enough, I just nod.

Because I already know the answer.

I’m exactly what is needed.

Right on time.