Why I’m Done Being Everything for Everyone

A Personal Reckoning with Boundaries and Becoming Whole Again

Before I get into it, I want to set the stage. This is written for me, honestly. This is to get some shit off my chest, to say what I have to say, to close a chapter so I can start a new book. This is going to land with the ones that it lands with, with the ones who can resonate with this feeling, because while I am writing it within a certain context, what I am sharing is a feeling too many of us have experienced in a variety of different dynamics.

For some people, it will feel as cathartic to read as it was for me to write. For others, this one is gonna feel like a bit of a doozy because as they say, “hit dogs holler”.

Most of you joined the ATW community sometime in 2020 (to all of my pre-2020 gang gang—I see y'all too 😉). You joined at a time when we were all forced onto the internet, we had to shift how we did life, like aaaaalllllll of life. This was also a time when what the collective needed was explicit education about racialized oppression and systems of hierarchy. If you are stumbling upon this and don’t know anything about me, feel free to peep my IG or Website.

I, as an educator and guide, met the collective need & our social distancing reality by quickly shifting to an online-only format AND educated specifically on race relations, white supremacy, etc., etc. It's what the collective needed and what my academic and professional expertise qualified me for, so I did it.

That being said, over the last nearly three years, I have been working really hard to try to pull myself out of the corner I backed myself into. I slowly shifted back to in person work, community support and zoomed back out to focus on collective liberation and not just racism and white supremacy (an important piece to understand, but only ONE piece of liberation work).

In that time, what I learned is this: generally, people don't care about their marginalized educators beyond what they can extract from them, OR what boxes they can check off for them.

The nature of being online is that I am not a whole person for most of the people who follow me or learn from me virtually. The nature of our oppressive society is that most people generally view and engage with people on a transactional level, because if they aren’t intentionally NOT doing that, the status quo has taught us to behave accordingly.

People don't care if you're sad, if you're depressed, if you're having a hard time, if life is throwing hands at you, if the grandma that they all praised in your Ted Talk has passed, or anything else.

What people care about is how you can make them feel and what you can do for them.

I believe that most people are inherently good. I believe that most people mean well. I also believe that people are walking to the beat of their socialization and that most people’s goodness or well intentions are derailed by a variety of things…and we gotta interact with people based on who they are now, not who we know they could be! That’s also why I hold the ones (personally and professionally) who show up reciprocally so damn close!

So, with that realization, I had a decision to make. See, I'm the type of person who always asks myself, “What is my responsibility to myself and others in this situation”? In this particular situation, I had stopped asking about myself and was hyper-focused on my responsibility to others. But my responsibility to myself was to make shifts and changes to make sure that I honor myself, my own needs, and my own humanity. If people have shown me who they are and how they move, I could sit here and continue to blame them, be upset, complain, etc., etc., or I could change something.

So I changed, because if I know I am being mistreated and I don't like it, but I also don't do anything to at least try to change that situation, well, now I am fully complicit in my own dehumanization. To be clear, I was complicit for a very long time. I knew it was happening, but I let it happen because my income was also so deeply tied to continuing to show up and let it happen.

Instead of doing the scary thing and making those adjustments, I grew resentful, which killed my creativity. I stopped speaking, podcasting, and writing because I couldn’t see past my disappointment and anger. I stopped doing what I was good at and what I love to do. Then I realized that’s a lot like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die; it was only negatively impacting me.

Once I stepped into my sovereignty and prioritized my humanity above all else, my next ah-ha! moment was that I didn’t have to throw it all away or do anything drastic; I simply had to change how I let people access me. I stopped giving away all of my knowledge and expertise for free or for far less than I should be charging, I stopped letting people take from me without any kind of reciprocity, and I simply stopped participating in it all. Very quickly, the reaction to my audacious shift (I hope you hear the sarcasm there) only served to confirm exactly what I believed - people stop following you, stop supporting you, hiring you, engaging, etc., because now they can't take advantage of you.

It's kind of like when you lay out a boundary with a loved one and they get super mad at that boundary and try to vilify you. What they are really angry at is that they now have to be a version of themselves that actually deserves that level of access to you, OR, in my case, ALSO have to pay for time, knowledge, emotional support, and so on. What they are really reacting to is that they can no longer be extractive; they actually have to participate reciprocally, and god forbid we expect that from people.

Now, I recognize that many people will simply say (because they have), “Well, I didn't know what you were up to, you've been quiet”. To that I say *with a heavy-handed sprinkle of cayenne*, have you been paying attention to the core tenets of liberatory work I teach? What happened to leading with curiosity? What happened to the benefit of the doubt based on my previously proven track record or character? What happened to maybe extending to others the same level of grace that they have extended to you? What happened to asking people “what changed and why”? I'll leave you to think about that some more while I move on to my point…..

Beyond the fact that I am not exempt from life lifing, I also shifted to focus my energy and effort in a way that not only honored me but also allowed me to enter back into intentional community both online and in person. I did this not just because I am only one person and work-life balance is something I, too, get to have, BUT because I want to do work that lights me up and fills my cup. I want to be where I am appreciated, celebrated, and respected.

Have I been “quiet” about it? No, actually, I haven’t at all. Did people stop listening, or caring, or checking for me once I stopped giving away my magic for free on the internet? That’s more likely the case, and I don’t write that to clap back at anybody because I am truly unbothered by that fact; I write that instead to shift our thinking to one of accountability.

But since you are here, and since people think that if you aren’t posting on an app that I personally don’t put a lot of value in, let me tell y’all where I am at professionally….

• I am the CEO of a few businesses.

• I am the founder and Co-Executive Director of the Asafa Collective.

• I am a mentor and a strength and conditioning coach for our Azima program. We train student athletes and, through our partnership with Bay EMT, run the PT program for Alameda County’s Firefighter 1 Academy. I provide an even higher level of support (mental, emotional, and financial) and guidance for our full-support mentees through our Anaz program; we are their family!

• I am still providing liberatory education and guidance, but now I’m doing it in a way that feels better for me. You can join the Collective, enroll in Evolve, purchase a self-paced course, or hire me one-on-one. (Also, the ATW app is coming soon!)

• I am starting to run in-person workshops, events, and retreats again. Sign up for the one in September; there are a few subsidized and full-payment spots left!

• I decided to stop trying to teach business owners how to inhabit my zone of genius (operations, systems, growth and leadership through a liberatory lens) and instead started taking on clients and providing a “Decolonial fractional COO” consulting service (and I come with an AMAZING team from financials to project management and execution should that be a need). It’s less taxing and allows me to have a lot more time and energy to do other things. Interested? Holla at me, I have spots for two more clients!

• The podcast is coming back, and so is Substack - it’ll be a little different because I’m done limiting myself to one singular topic. Everything that I live and breathe is liberation, from $$ to dating to how I train and parent my dog. So when I say According to Weeze, I really mean that….the podcast is life through a liberatory lens, according to me! It’s about to be the same gems, lessons etc just real honest, real direct, real “I said what I said” with a foundation of compassion and care.

• I am actively trying to create more space in my life for my own humanity, my own joy, my own experiences and a whole bunch of side quests.

So that’s where I’m at. This is what I’m doing work wise. I’m out here changing actual real lives in my own backyard while simultaneously helping people change their lived experiences, their financial realities and their legacies. I am guiding people in their pursuit of becoming active architects of possibility in their own lives, homes, businesses, communities and subsequently for the global collective.

I am not, nor have I ever been, for everyone. I have not and will never be sorry about that. But now, more than ever, I am standing ten toes down on who I am, fully, authentically, and most certainly without apology. I’m not angry, nor do I harbor resentment. I am at peace with the last five years, but I won’t ever go back. So I suggest you take a moment to buckle up and enjoy the ride, OR unsubscribe.

Welcome to the fun house, babes 🫶🏽 it’s only up from here!