More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)

by Elaine Welteroth

To understand my enthusiasm, you must understand this: it is pretty rare to meet a fellow member of the White Dad Club (I invented this umbrella term as an endearing way to classify those of us with minority moms and White dads, simply for the sake of making us feel less alien and more like part of some really awesome, really tiny tribe).

From my very informal and not at all scientific observations, I’ve found the White Mom Club to be much more common.

When your dreams are bigger than the places you find yourself in, sometimes you need to seek out your own reminders that there is more. And there is always more waiting for you on the other side of fear.

Life transitions are our biggest opportunities for growth. They push us to become the fierce heroes of our own stories. They pull us into new territories and ask us to become bigger, braver versions of ourselves.

For my cover, I went with a retro, Billie Holiday–inspired rookie modeling photo of me grinning wide, my head tilted back, hands on my hips, elbows wide to create that perfect triangle of negative space. I had red glossy lips to match the big red flower pinned into my pompadour. The cover lines read: “How to Go After the Career of Your Dreams,” “Exclusive: How This Writer/Model/College Student Plans to Make It to the Top.” The cover story was titled “Elaine Welteroth on Why She’s the One for the Job.” I hit them with my very own, very extra interpretation of a magazine internship application.

High above the clouds, we huddled together and challenged each other to share one thing we really, really wanted. The thing we wanted so badly it was difficult to even say aloud.

I BELIEVE WE ALL HAVE CALLINGS. Purposes. Work that only we can do. It seems ridiculous now, but I came scarily close to never naming and claiming mine because I was so certain it sounded silly and impossible.

I had heard church people testify about miracles “on the other side of prayer.” But until your prayers are answered in a miraculous way, you reserve room for doubt.

Whenever friends or family felt the need to fling their fear onto my future, I would just tell them, “This is between me and God.”

My takeaway was clear: in business, no matter how much value you bring, you will always be disposable.

The point was to become unbreakable. My mother’s words were the warning shot that fairness, justice, and security are not guaranteed to any of us. No matter how hard we work. Especially for women of color.

M. Foss had advised me once to treat dating like gardening instead. Plant the most promising seeds. Water them all. Taste what each has to offer. And when you find one that produces fruit you could eat every single day, give a little more love to it and start pruning the rest.

Looking back now, I realize we need to learn as women to trust that bad feeling the first time, and not try to will it away.

What I know now is that when we derive our worth from the relationships in our lives—the intimate ones, the social circles we belong to, the companies we work for—we give away our power and become dependent upon external validation. When that is taken away, our sense of value, and identity, goes with it.

Rather than trying to be what I wasn’t—in my work and in my life—I made a conscious commitment to fully own everything that made me who I am. Because those were the very things that made my point of view as an editor that much more valuable.

As an FOD, sometimes just being yourself is the radical act. When you occupy space in systems that weren’t built for you, your authenticity is your activism. But doing any radical work that has the power to shift systems—especially from within a corporate structure—requires allyship.

Yet with more and more diverse covers popping up over time, the focus on authentic representation behind the scenes was becoming even more vital. In order to change the stories, you must change the storytellers.

“There’s a secret language shared among black girls who are destined to climb mountains and cross rivers in a world that tells us to belong to the valleys that surround us,” she wrote. “So here we are, connecting as two nonconforming black girls.”

Social media democratized content creation, giving a free platform to fresh voices and new players who no longer relied on traditional corporate structures for legitimacy or an audience.

Do not allow anyone to force you into a negotiation that you haven’t had time to prepare for. You can simply say, “I’d love to take the night and come back to you on that first thing.”

are not enough—so we strive even harder to earn respect, we put in the overtime, we bend history, and we stretch ourselves thin to reach and exceed the expectations of the powers that be. We rise to every occasion. We strive for excellence. Because that is what Black women do. We take what we can get, and we make magic happen. We make lemonade.

The higher up we get, the more apologies we are expected to make for our power. It can feel demoralizing, exhausting, and unfair. At times, your very existence and survival in these spaces can feel like an impossibility.

When we operate the way White power has operated for generations by opening doors for our own, is it considered nepotism? Or is it just leveling the playing field?

“The thing about privilege is, oftentimes you don’t even have to think about inequality when you don’t have to face it.”

You don’t just turn it on and boom, “You’re woke!” Instead, it is a process of learning, listening, stripping away the blinders that privilege puts on, and exposing yourself to suffering that doesn’t always affect you in order to act from a place of understanding and empathy.

There is no glory in a grind that literally grinds you down to dust. EVE EWING

Crises are nature’s way of forcing change—breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place. SUSAN L. TAYLOR

Our lives are a series of dreams realized. We don’t say that enough. Instead, we repeatedly ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As if one answer, one dream, one career path can define you throughout your whole life.

When you find yourself existing in the space between dreams realized, parts of you will feel too big for where you are, while other parts of you will feel too small for where you’re going. Go anyway. Do not wait. Do not wonder if you can. Do not ask for permission.

And when the world tells you to shrink, expand.