Now, I want you to wrap your head around this: expectations are simply earned privileges. For us, Foundational Black Americans (FBAs), this is a hard concept because so much has been—and indeed still is—expected from us all the time. Sometimes, many time – (heck!) most times – it simply gets overwhelming. We place a calm face on it, smile, and keep going as if nothing bothers us. Then, in those rare moments, we remember that the God of our Ancestors promised not to give us any more than we can bear…and there it is! There what is? We are always the ones to grin and bear it, no matter what happens.
But let’s be honest for a second: “bearing it” shouldn’t have to be our forever state of being. When we treat unyielding endurance as our only setting, we accidentally teach everyone else that our boundaries can just stretch forever. We let people pile on expectations because they know we’re “resilient,” turning a beautiful spiritual promise into an excuse for our own exhaustion. That ancestral reassurance wasn’t a contract to carry the weight of the world on our backs indefinitely; it was a reminder that we’d survive the storm until we could finally lay the heavy stuff down.
Getting our power back means realizing we are allowed to just say, “Naw, not today.” Setting expectations is a privilege we’ve already paid for in full—with the labor we’ve invested, the history we’ve written, and the culture we’ve built from scratch with our people’s blood, sweat and tears. We don’t need to put up with yet another ration of crap for the right to take a breath, and we don’t owe anyone an apology for demanding the same respect we so freely give out to everyone else. When we start looking at expectations as something earned, the whole game changes. We stop asking how much more we can take and start asking what we are actually owed.
At the end of the day, breaking this cycle isn’t about hardening our hearts; it’s about finally letting ourselves off the hook. We don’t honor the sacrifices of those who came before us by burning ourselves out to keep everyone else toasty warm. We honor them by actually thriving. By shifting how we handle these heavy expectations, we give ourselves permission to take off the mask, step out of the role of the world’s emotional shock absorbers, and finally enjoy the peace we’ve earned.