While society continues to progress in some areas, there’s still work to be done in creating a cultural ecosystem that truly honors Black women’s strength, beauty, and resilience.
Author and psychotherapist Oludara Adeeyo is the brilliant mind behind “Meditations for Black Women.” The book is designed to guide Black women back to themselves in the midst of chaos. Written with the unique challenges of Black women in mind, it explores everything from embracing rest to dismantling internalized oppression.
21Ninety had the opportunity to speak with the open-hearted author about the power of femininity, the practice of mindfulness, and the journey of liberating your younger self.
21NINETY: Right now, existing is laborious, especially as a Black person. What incentivized you to make something specifically for black women?
OLUDARA ADEEYO: One, I’m a black woman. But, I think specifically with this book, I am a big proponent of self-reflection. Spending time with yourself, practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness has definitely helped me in my life get through lots of tough things. Especially now, it is definitely the right time because of the current climate in the United States. My first book, “Self Care for Black Women,” was a tip book, very practical. I am a social worker, so I do believe in practical things. My second book was a journal, and that was also lovely because that was something connected to me as well, as I believe in affirmations. Affirmations really helped me when I was doing my own self-care journey, and I love journaling. I’m a very big proponent for journaling. My third book was a coloring book, another mindfulness activity where you spend time with yourself. You are really just focusing on the coloring and letting all the worries and stressors wither away for the time being. And now this book, it’s a book of meditations. What I also liked about it was the inclusion of quotes. I believe in the Black womanhood collective. I believe in community healing, and I believe in learning from each other as Black women. Including some of these quotes was to inspire, but also, to encourage people to go look into these women and their stories and what you can learn from them. See what other work they’ve done
21N: There are so many revolving themes in “Meditations for Black Woman,” but I think that rest is really a centerpiece. In my own personal life, rest has become something that takes so much effort. Why do you think it is more difficult for Black women in particular to rest, and why do you think it’s so fundamental?
OA: It’s definitely more difficult for us to rest. It’s ancestral. The history of us, of our people always having to work, whether we were enslaved or whether you were your family comes from a different background. It seems to be the theme in society where black women are required to do a lot of work. Not just collectively, but also individually. Sometimes a lot of us, because of misogynoir, which is, misogyny and racism, it’s almost like we are expected to do double the work. We’re given these subtle messages from childhood about our place in the world. And, a lot of times, we internalize these things. They become part of our person, how we view ourselves, our self-image. You become conditioned to the idea of, “Okay, I have to work twice as hard to you get half this far.” And a lot of that is definitely true. Because we definitely are not recipients of DEI. People would rather not hire us and not pay us. But, we’re usually the overqualified. Especially in the United States, Black women are the most educated. You would think we’d be the most paid, but no. I think these messages that we need to work hard, that we need to sacrifice ourselves, we get them from our family. We get them from community, school, work, even the church if you grow up religious. And so you begin to really believe that and you create a narrative in it, like “I have to work really hard and I can’t rest. I can’t afford to rest because if I rest, then I’m gonna lose out on this opportunity.” We learned that from our mothers, aunties, grandmothers. It becomes really hard to unlearn that. You’re so used to prioritizing other people, it can feel wrong to prioritize yourself, but absolutely not.
21N: Absolutely. I think that talking about it and giving each other permission to do it, not only vocally, but by exemplifying it, is how we break those cycles. So many women in our generation are doing what we can to break the patterns we’ve seen our mothers and grandmothers fall victim to. I’d love for you to speak more to how we can build a better ecosystem, not only for ourselves but the next generation that witnesses us.
OA: I do think that us resting is creating a different ecosystem. Because if one person is doing it, it’s like teaching women older than us that they can do it. It’s teaching the women in the same generation as us that they can do it and it’s teaching the women in the generation under us that they can do it. My mom passed away about eleven years ago. She had an autoimmune disorder and rheumatoid arthritis. Whenever I tell people that was just her disease that she had, a lot of people are like, “Well, then why did she die?” I’m like, “Honestly, her immune system was just really bad.” That was a build-up from her not taking care of herself. Not going to the doctor when she needed to, not resting. I don’t even think my mom ever had a good sleeping schedule. I knew her my whole life and I don’t ever think I saw her well-rested. She was always stressing about something. I think seeing that made me look at myself and be like, “Okay, I gotta have to make some changes if I wanna live longer than my mom did.” I don’t wanna go out of this earth stressed about a job. Stressed about a relationship. It’s just not worth it. I think we are a self-care renaissance, especially for black women. There are plenty of us like me who are out there talking the talk and saying, “Hey. We need to rest.” The women before us didn’t have the privilege of that, but now we have the privilege where we can absolutely do it. I think that’s wonderful. I think it’s beautiful.
21N: I love what you said about it being a self-care renaissance. I’m so grateful that it’s trendy, but it’s funny because I do think that self-care has become a diluted thing of bubble baths and deep breaths when it runs so much deeper. What I love about your book is you speak so much about breaking up with internalized oppression. That is a very, critical part of self-care. Really making sure that you interrogate your inner dialogue and decide what part of it belongs to you and what part of it doesn’t. I’d love for you to speak to the significance of that.
OA: It’s so significant because I think sometimes as black women, we are our worst critics. We can be the biggest component of the oppression we experience. We grew up in an oppressive society and experienced discrimination, micro-aggressions, racism. I think sometimes we believe these things and we think, “This is what I deserve. This is my place in the world. This is fine.” We submit to a scarcity mindset. My biggest thing is helping black women be their most authentic selves. When you are really oppressed and you have internalized a lot of these oppressive messages, you’re not your authentic self. You’re adhering to things like respectability politics. You’re not living as your true self. I personally don’t think that that is the kind of life whatever higher being you believe in wants you to have. Where you’re just supposed to be on this earth and fall in line and follow a certain order because of how other people view you. I think it’s important to break up with that so you can truly be emotionally, mentally, physically free. Where you can say, “F—k that job. I’m leaving. I’m not gonna internalize whatever BS they’re saying. I’ll be a little bit more self-confident, a little bit more self-trusting, and listen to my intuition more.” When you break up with, internalized oppression, you are tuning to your intuition more. You’re more self-confident. You’re more self-trusting. And that just leads to a better life.
21N: If you could give your younger self tools, what would those tools be?
OA: It would be to follow your passion. To not be afraid of going outside the box sooner. I think younger me was very focused on keeping other people happy. She was focused on doing what I thought was best for my family. Those are things you can keep in mind, but not to the point where it sacrifices your happiness. I would definitely give myself my younger self the tools of working on listening to her intuition more, not being afraid to just try things and see how they work out.
21N: Totally, I feel like we truly find our purpose when we become the versions of ourselves that little us needed. As the book touches on, meditation can take on so many forms. How is meditation showing up in your life right now?
OA: I think I was first introduced to it through yoga, but never really thought that I was meditating when I did it. But I started doing hot yoga when I was a teen and that’s definitely a clear version of meditation where you’re literally just sitting there with your thoughts and doing poses. That is still something I do. It is still incredibly healing for me. Maybe a walk. Sometimes I just sit and listen to music. I love high-frequency music. Helps me to clear my mind. I’m what I consider a deconstructed Christian. I’m just someone who grew up in the church and has gone through their own religious trauma and sometimes, listening to worship music is healing. Journaling, sitting with my thoughts and writing down my thoughts or typing out my thoughts or verbalizing my thoughts to a voice note. Reading. Anything you do that’s just clearing out your mind is a mindfulness act. Putting on a good podcast and going to do laundry.
21N: Absolutely. Another thing I really loved about the book was that you speak to women allowing themselves to be soft and in their feminine. Why did you find that important to mention?
OA: I grew up as a very hard person. Most of my life, I’ve just felt very masculine. Sometimes I hate using masculine and feminine, but for the context of describing the energy, I grew up very masculine. I’m the youngest and only daughter of Nigerian immigrants, and my older sibling is a boy. My parents told me they expected a lot of me versus my brother. So I grew up very hard and mean, especially to men. Not my friends, but in romantic context, I was very mean to men. Now I’m the total opposite. I prioritize myself and allow my family to take care of themselves. I don’t initially take the responsibilities or any of their concerns, because I think in my family, my role has always been being the family manager. Even while my mom was sick and I was her caregiver, we lived in the same home and my brother was there. So, yeah, I’m very soft with myself. I give myself a lot more grace. Anytime a negative thought or judgmental thought about myself comes up, I am very quick to counteract that. I will talk to myself. I’ll also work it out with my friends. I thankfully have a lot of friends who are also on their own wellness journey and are very good at being soft. So they’re soft with me. And because my friends are soft with me, it reminds I can be soft with myself. Sometimes, I can just be so hard on myself because that’s what I’m used to. Holding myself to a really high expectation and forgetting that I can just chill.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.