​"In childhood and early adolescence, I grappled with both the pull of self-help narratives and the reality of my traumatic moments. During those years, navigating a world that often felt inaccessible left me balancing a fragile sense of self. I would try to resist the internalized self-hate—the belief that there was something inherently wrong with me simply for existing as a Black girl - in a poor community at a "ghetto" school. That message didn’t come from a single voice or moment; it seeped into the spaces where innocence should dwell—school, playgrounds, family conversations, and the subtle, persistent messages of media and environment.

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My self-worth became tethered to appearances I could not change and to comparisons I could not win. I learned, at a tender age, to measure my value by what I lacked rather than by who I was becoming. Yet I also carried a stubborn spark of curiosity, resilience, and a determination to hold on to parts of myself that didn’t fit society’s prescribed images of worth. Erving Goffman’s (2003) concept of impression management—how we curate our various roles—often comes to mind when I reflect on my childhood. The roles I played frequently felt disconnected or even contradictory. The child in me clung to moments of joy, quick smiles, and small acts of defiance against the idea that beauty and value belonged only to certain shades or shapes."