What’s One Thing You’d Tell Black Women on a Journey To Self-Discovery?

From the author of the upcoming memoir This Is How You Love Her

Don’t Run

by Traci Saulsberry

“Don’t run!”

The words raced out of me with an urgency that surprised me. I was on a panel at a wellness convention.

I had just been asked, “What’s one thing you’d tell women on a journey to self-discovery?” and it slipped from my mouth like a rally cry. Like a mother trying to stop a toddler from running into the street after a shiny ball.

“Stop! Don’t run!”

The audience was quiet at first.

Then a woman in the back slowly clapped. “Yes, yes” she said, a cry lodged within the words. And then, a sort of congregation of claps and murmurs began to fill the room. Like Sunday morning. A word tied up in the thicket now released.

I hadn’t realized how many of us felt the urge to escape our own lives in order to find ourselves.

So when I sat down to write to you, the first and only thing I could think to say was, “Don’t run!”

If you are looking for yourself, trying to find out who you are, what you are looking for is right where you are.

Sound the alarms, ring the bell, give me a bullhorn. Because the alternative is loud and I need to be louder. The fantasy self-discovery story where youescape to a faraway land and find yourself (and potentially in love with a tall, dark, and handsome man…) is compelling. It’s wistful, cinematic and…

It’s not the answer.

Don’t run from your home to some island or city to try to find yourself. I’ll be the one to tell you—you aren’t there.

I watched the same movies—I mean, Taye Diggs and turquoise water, who could resist? I read the same books glamorizing Bali and endless pasta. I’m not saying they lied; I’m certain there is good food, love, and revelations on that distant island we yearn to jet off to. There’s peace, and everything you are fleeing at home definitely will be a lot quieter when you get to said getaway.

But one day the trip is over.

The lover reveals themself to be a human like everywhere else on the planet. And the food is probably amazing, but it can only fill you up so much before you remember you’re still you.

I know because I wanted to do the same. Like a game of dominos, my life collapsed. My high-powered job, my relationship, and life as I’d known it were gone. Who are you when everything you built around you falls away? It felt as if I were suddenly no one. Extinct. I had the escapist dream. I thought about leaving my hometown and starting over. But real life interjected. I couldn’t go anywhere. I had a son with a life here and bills and responsibilities that demanded I stay right where I was.

I remember thinking, angsty and frustrated, “What?” So I can’t find myself now? I have to sit in this monotony of what I know, which now feels like quick sand.

And life said back to me, Yep, don’t run. Stay right where you are.

So I stayed home and I faced the big questions circling my collapse. Who am I? What do I do next?

Who am I?

I sat with my journal on the edge of my bed and asked myself questions I’d never stopped long enough to consider. Even the little things, like what my favorite color is and what I like to do on the weekend.

As I learned about the small parts of myself, I went deeper. What do I want for my life? What makes me happy? As I uncovered my answers, I began to root for myself, for the woman with the dreams I’d never really known.

I wanted to find more of her in the place where I’d never bothered to know her: at home. So I traversed my hometown like it was some foreign land I’d never experienced. Why don’t we romanticize what we already have?

I did things at home I’d always been too scared or too skeptical to do. I drove down the street from my house, and I stood face-to-face with an actual horse, a majestic beast named Red, and learned what conviction in my own words felt like. I saw an aura man who took my picture, and I watched as a rainbow enveloped me on a small Polaroid. I took a pottery class around the corner from my house, tasted wine at a local shop, and ate at every restaurant in my city. I took walks along the same streets I’d once felt lost within. I made peace with the places that almost broke me. I looked at sunsets like they were scoops of melted sherbet and picked flowers to make my own bouquet. Who said the grass is greener than anywhere but home?

I stopped falling in and out of love with a boy and into love with myself. I even bought myself a ring to seal the commitment, to love myself through all of those vows we offer others.

Most of all, at home I faced everything I wanted to escape. And it still felt pretty damn whimsical and cinematic.

So you know what? I’ll write the new fantasy, we will, for how to find ourselves—right where we are.

Because the truth is… everything you need is within you. And you are already you. You just have to find her and then love the you that you find.

So, don’t run, stay home.

And I’m not saying this like some anxious mother who doesn’t want you to leave for college or go out at night with the fast boy. The world outside of where you are isn’t scary—it’s expansive and worth exploring. You won’t find yourself somewhere else or in someone else.

I’m saying it as a girl who ran for years and one day finally stayed home only to find that what she was looking for all along was always right inside of her. Because at the end of the day, you always have to come home to yourself.

Don’t run.

Your life is waiting for you to remember who you are. Oh, I can only imagine what clarity is on the other side of that knowing and the kind of comfort awaiting you at home.

---

Traci Saulsberry is a writer, leadership coach, and senior communications executive. At twenty-seven, she became one of the youngest Black executives at NBC, beginning a fourteen-year tenure shaping high-level entertainment narratives before building and leading the communications team at Peacock. Today, Traci is a host and narrator for Calm, the world’s leading meditation app, where she guides series on workplace wellbeing and professional growth. As a leadership coach and keynote speaker, she focuses on helping individuals find and own their voice—particularly while navigating spaces where they are underrepresented. She also serves as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

Her debut book, This Is How You Love Her (Abrams Press), is a fiercely candid, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking blend of memoir and self-help on vulnerability, identity, and reclaiming your life. It is set to release on August 4th and is available for pre-order now wherever books are sold.