I was caught by surprise when a young woman, named Annette Lee, came up to me and said “thank you for telling me to claim my space in your SOAR workshop. Those words have meant the world to me.” She informed me that in her culture, young girls and women are taught to take up as little space as possible because they are only supposed to stand in the background and to give space to men. What she experiences in her culture is no different than the fight for voice women wage in America regardless of ethnicity. We continue to claim our space in our homes, in classrooms, in sports, in boardrooms, on picket lines, in voting booths and now in the White House.
It was 1985, during my junior year at Spelman when Professor Gloria Wade Gayle’s told a class of young women: “claim your space!” Saying those four words: “I claim my space,” made us bold. They assured us of our possibility, our worth and the necessity to stand in our purpose because we got work to do. It also reminded us that if we don’t claim our space, someone else will.
Saying, “I claim my space” became Annette’s mantra and reminder that if she holds that space, it is because she earned it; it is because she deserves it. I continue to share Dr. Gayle’s instruction as an affirmation and as a prayer to empower others in SOAR’s writing for healing workshops and in my classes at Howard University, so they too will step into their power without hesitation or reconciliation to promulgate: “I claim my space.”
In the Meantime, Be Good to YOU!
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