26 BLACK WOMEN
Losing Yourself Trying to Be Strong
When Doing Everything Right Still Isn’t Enough
Juanita Ingram
Juanita Ingram had spent years doing everything she was supposed to do. She earned the degrees, built the career, worked long hours, and learned how to move through professional spaces where Black women were often expected to be exceptional without being fully considered. She knew how to perform, produce, and keep going, even when the room required more from her than it gave back.
Eventually, the pressure stopped staying neatly contained. Juanita remembers standing at her desk shaking and crying, trying to tell herself to stop and realizing she could not. What had looked like competence from the outside had become exhaustion, frustration, hurt, and the weight of constantly moving through spaces where she could not simply be human.
LISTEN TO JUANITA’S STORY
“I have a right to want to feel safe. And they
acted as though I was just being dramatic.”
WHEN EVERYTHING BECAME ANOTHER THING TO HANDLE
Juanita was traveling for work in Tijuana when two men she had walked past outside her hotel opened fire less than a minute later. They shot several people, chased one man underneath a van and killed him, then ran into the building where Juanita was working. She spent the next three hours hiding under a desk during an active-shooter situation, not knowing what was going to happen.
When employees were finally allowed out, Juanita wanted to go home. Instead of concern, she was met with disappointment. Leaders reminded her about the awards banquet planned for that evening and questioned what the manufacturing team would think if she left. The message was clear: even after what she had just lived through, she was still expected to show up.
What stayed with Juanita was not only the violence. It was having to defend her right to be affected by it. She had spent years proving she could handle demanding rooms, but in that moment she needed something much simpler: the freedom to say she did not feel safe and have that be enough.
WHEN EXCELLENCE STILL DIDN’T PROTECT HER
Juanita had spent years doing what professional Black women are so often told will protect them. Work hard. Be prepared. Let your results speak for themselves. She earned an accounting degree, a master’s degree, a law degree, passed the bar on the first try, worked 12-hour days, and still watched other people move ahead of her.
What exhausted her was not believing she lacked ability. Juanita knew she was good at what she did. The exhaustion came from realizing that excellence still did not guarantee that the room would treat her with care, fairness, or basic humanity. She could be rewarded for being competent and dependable while still being dismissed when she needed something from the people around her.
Looking back, Juanita can see how normalized overfunctioning had become. It looked like diligence. It looked like excellence. It looked like doing more than enough just to remain in the room. Eventually, she had to question a system where doing everything right could still leave her carrying the cost.
“I am the epitome of you have to be eight times better than everyone else.”
WHEN HER BODY CHOSE TO BE HEARD
Juanita had gotten good at pushing past what hurt. She could stay composed, keep working, and convince herself that she was fine even when something inside her was saying otherwise. But eventually, her body stopped cooperating with the performance.
Standing in her office shaking and crying, Juanita could no longer talk herself out of what was happening. She had been trying to be stronger than the stress, stronger than the hurt, stronger than the environment. In that moment, she realized that ignoring what she felt was not protecting her. It was costing her.
That became part of the shift. Juanita began listening to herself instead of immediately overriding herself. If something hurt, it hurt. If she felt unsafe, she felt unsafe. If a situation was no longer worth what it was taking from her, she could admit that too.
“This was not working, and this
was not worth it.”
WHEN SHE STOPPED LETTING THE JOB DEFINE HER
For years, Juanita had been known as Juanita the attorney. The title carried accomplishment, credibility, and a version of success she had worked hard to earn. But as she began questioning the environment around her, she also had to confront how much of her identity had become attached to what she did rather than who she was.
She had felt that tension before when her family moved to London and she temporarily stepped away from practicing law. Without the familiar role, Juanita began writing, working with a life coach, and exploring parts of herself that had been waiting outside the boundaries of her profession. Still, when she returned to the United States, she slipped easily back into being “Juanita the attorney.”
The deeper work became accepting that she was never only one thing. Lawyer was part of her, but so were writer, producer, speaker, wife, mother, storyteller, and all the other parts of herself she had once struggled to name without explanation. The reckoning was realizing she did not have to keep giving one version of success more weight than the fullness of who she was.
“I had not done the full work of accepting and acknowledging the fullness of who I am, not what I do, but who I am.”
CHOOSING SAFETY WITHOUT APOLOGY
Juanita eventually reached a point where staying in an environment that kept costing her peace no longer made sense. Walking away was not simple. She had a high-paying job, benefits, equity, title, and all the things that can make leaving look irrational from the outside. But she also knew what the environment was doing to her.
When the opportunity came for her family to move abroad, Juanita said yes. She did not see it as running away. She saw it as making room to heal, to love on herself, and to step outside a space that had taught her to keep overriding what her body and spirit were saying. That time away became one of the most restorative decisions she had made.
Today, Juanita talks about safety differently. Not just physical safety, but emotional, mental, and health-related safety too. She no longer believes choosing herself means everything will fall apart. It means trusting that she is allowed to protect what keeps her whole.
“I will choose my safety… without apology.”
ABOUT JUANITA INGRAM
Juanita Ingram is an attorney, actress, author, producer, global speaker, wife, and mother of two whose work spans law, media, storytelling, and nonprofit leadership. She has practiced law for more than two decades, runs three nonprofits, and produces television projects available across platforms including Amazon, Tubi, and Roku.
She is also the first Black woman to win the title of Mrs. Universe. After years of living abroad in London, Taiwan, and Singapore, Juanita continues using storytelling to explore identity, purpose, reinvention, and what it means for Black women to live as their full selves.
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