Introducing Madame est Brûlée:on teaching, cortisol, friendship grief, Black woman joy, and coming home to my body-ody

I truly think that is a sin to be teaching in elementary school at this point. And before those of you whom teach in other grades scream, but what about all grades, that is fair and valid but for me, I am expressing my experience and opinion. I is tired and my brain is fried. Yet, it is also in a healing frequency. Why? What do I mean you may ask? Well let us set the stage, it is 2026, the world is well, look around and read the room. But there is a glimmer, I am living and loving (delusionally) in New York City where our Knicks just won a historic 13th game and may well be on track to win the Championships for the first time since winning in 1970 and 1973. If the Mayor, who by the way, I am a fan, truly, chef's kiss can ban bedtime for toddlers, then why oh why do I have to drag my wagon to work in Southeast Queens. Despite Dewey's ideas about education breaking down the false split between work and play, labor and leisure, school and life and Karl Marx believing our labor will be the expression of human creativity not just survival one day, I feel spent and I should actually feel quite liberated with Juneteenth around the corner and two remote days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slldMEPvUqA&list=RDslldMEPvUqA&start_radio=1

At this point you are still wondering why.

Well let's start with a few things. The first is I have now settled in my bones being officially done with the Spring semester of my Second doctoral year. This is a big deal and I am treating it as such day by day. My body has been regulating itsslef now that it is not ripping and running to and fro around the city. Getting this PhD has wreak havoc on my body, and mainly it stems from spending 30% of my day in an elementary setting with small children buzzing about. As a MLL educator, I have developed a particular kid of patience with children overall (those most day I experience extreme mothering guilt because I am often overwhelmed, overstimulated and just down right exhausted when it time to deal with my own child) and I feel and believe when I get to the point of tapping out, it is too late. Madame est brûlée, but not as nearly cute and sweet. Teaching has taxed me greatly in this last decade. It has been cushioned between the bosom of grief and over-achiveing. An ongoing existential crisis, an almost performative matrix, that now that I am entering my third year this Fall, I have reason and vision to see that my authenticity and loyalty to myself will not only save me from being chewed up and spat out by academia but also heal me and the people before me that I carry with me day by day.

Another somatic realization is again loss of friends but in this context over the years and in total and the way in which people left. I’m hurt because the way they left felt cold, confusing, and unfinished. The realization I am sitting with is the cumulative grief of friendships ending over the years—not just the fact that people left, but the specific ways they left. A little over a year ago, a friend stopped talking to me with no explanation, no repair, no reaching back. Almost seven years ago, an ex-childhood friend not only called me out of my name and tried to slander me, but also insisted that I had intentionally hurt her in a way I genuinely did not understand at the time. She said I made light of her suicidal attempts and kept talking, and even though I did not remember it that way, I still honored her hurt, apologized, and even visited her while I was in town with my one-month-old baby. Still, I was met with words like “nagging” and “begging bitch,” and that stayed with me. Then, about four years ago, another childhood friend stopped talking to me because they felt I was siding with their ex-boyfriend, even though I did not know their personal business and was placed in a strange situation where other people were filling in gaps while I was trying to make sense of what I was seeing. To this day, I do not fully trust the people around that situation, because we sat down, tried to talk, and then somehow never spoke again. In all three situations, I sent the last text. That is the part my body remembers: the reaching, the confusion, the unfinished ending, and the quiet ache of realizing I was still trying to communicate with people who had already decided to leave. Being ghosted by people I cared about made me question the friendship, myself, and whether they ever truly valued me. It made my body hold confusion where there should have been closure. It made me replay moments, search for signs, and wonder if I had missed something. But I’m also realizing that their leaving gave me information. Not everyone who loves you knows how to communicate, repair, or stay in relationship with you as you evolve. Some people leave quietly because they do not have the capacity to be honest. Some people disappear because accountability requires a kind of emotional maturity they have not developed. Its annoying and hurtful but my energy field feels lighter because I know I have done what I could conceive as the best way to deal with fracture. In the messiness of it all I have reached out after delving into some shit within. So like Mother Maya Angelou says I rise, I can be hurt by the silence and still be grateful for the clarity.

I am tired of being the last person trying to save a relationship that everyone else has already abandoned. I deserved clarity. I deserved dignity. I deserved a conversation that did not make me beg for my own humanity. I do not have to make them villains to admit that their absence wounded me. I can honor what the friendship meant, grieve how it ended, and still accept that their leaving may have made room for a more peaceful, aligned version of my life. My body is teaching me that unfinished endings still leave marks. But they do not get to define my worth.

I don't even want to get started on how my research for dissertation topic is going. Because it is going great but the data itself and archives are quite overwhelming and it does get a bit emotional. I had to take a small break and create some distance between me and the work just so I can see it differently and at different angles and under different lights. I am excited to have reached out to a person of great interest in the research. Although things are going well, it is still alot .and as to not burn myself out, I must take a break. A short one. As with all things that require care, love, duty and responsibility, it gets heavy and you have to know when to set it down and pick it back up to keep carrying. Shout out to therapy for bringing out a lot of my subconscious thoughts and stuff up and out to the surface. So I can deal with it!

Another thing I am sitting with is that my writing voice in the age of AI and LLMs, needs to be imperfect and urgent and messy. As an academic, the voice, structure, style of writing I have is already situated within a particular context of academia. It works overtime and gets critiqued. But now with the advent and onslaught of instant automations consistently mimicking years and years of arts and humanities rigor or cleverness when deadlines are approaching and nothing can stop you once you take that nasty RedBull ( I am more of a caffeine as in espresso or strong green tea girl) and decide you will beat the 11:59 PM deadline, by any means necessary. It is hard to feel and think via writing. I am losing my mind. Now I am not going to act like I never used AI, pshh, yeah right. I have ! I am a Gemini Moon and it was sold quite beautifully but I am also heavily placed in signs that deal with beauty, responsibility and relationships and as you guessed this is causing me to feel the ick. The writing is not interesting. It breathes awkwardly but not in the human awkwardly way like this. So unlike my academic voice. So now like the voice I need to infuse academic work with for memory's sake.

Do you see the inflammation is decreased?

5 months of getting things off my plate literally and in all ways.

And maybe this is why I keep thinking about my body too because baby this body has been trying to get my attention for YEARS. Like hello? Is this mic on? Back in 2017 I was already asking questions about cortisol and stress and why my body was acting like I was being chased by a lion when really I was just trying to teach, live, pay bills, grieve, love, mother, study, build a business, answer emails, be “professional,” be kind, be available, be brilliant, be Black, be soft, be saved, be fine, be fine, be fine. And the BEAT GOES ONNNNNNNNN!!

And no I was not fine. My body knew before I admitted it. My body was swelling, holding water, holding tension, holding old conversations, holding workplace mess, holding grief, holding the unpaid emotional labor of being the one who can “handle it.” The body is PETTY but also wise because she will tell on you. And one thing about me, my weight moves in seasons. Every school year it starts creeping up like it pays rent here. The rhythm of education is beautiful yes yes shout out to pedagogy and all of that, but it is also relentless and lowkey violent on the nervous system. There are meetings, lesson plans, deadlines, children buzzing, adults adulting poorly, family responsibilities, doctoral work, Sage Ali needing her mother and not the burnt crispy version of her, and me trying to pour from a cup that is not only empty but somehow in the dishwasher (Melting). Then around February, like clockwork, my spirit gets up and says okay girl enough. The fog starts lifting. I get intentional. I lock in. No random snacks at work. No baked goods. I rebuke my friends excellent baked goods (but you can see them here), in the name of the Lord. Less gossip, more peace. More walking. More water fr because why am I acting like hydration is a conspiracy? More protein. More sleep even though I am in sleep debt and probably need reparations from my own schedule. More boundaries. More self-grace. And as of today I am down 27 pounds in about 5 months and I am proud, but not in a “look I shrunk myself” way. More like wow, I came back to myself. Wow, I stopped abandoning my body just because the world kept making demands on it.

Still moving strong and I love it!!

And I want to say this especially for Black women because whew. We deserve joy that is not attached to survival. We deserve softness that is not earned after exhaustion. We deserve to feel good in our bodies without needing a tragedy, diagnosis, breakup, birthday, wedding, reunion, doctor’s appointment or nervous breakdown to finally choose ourselves. This body has carried a daughter. This body has carried workplace abuse years ago. This body has carried doctoral studies in spaces where there are not many Black bodies. This body has carried generations of women who probably never got to say “I am tired” without somebody needing something from them five seconds later. This body has carried cortisol, grief, anxiety, inflammation, belly fat, puffiness, bad sleep, caffeine, joy, laughter, sexiness, prayer, fear, hope, and whatever else was in those baked goods at work. And still, look at her. Still sacred. Still soft. Still funny. Still mine. Cortisol will have you looking in the mirror like who is this swollen auntie and why is she wearing my face, but the truth is sometimes the body is not betraying you. Sometimes the body is protecting you from a life that keeps asking too much and giving too little back. So now the practice is not punishment. It is devotion. Walking even if it is only 20 minutes. Drinking water. Eating protein. Going to bed. Don’t call my phone past 9PM unless somebody is bleeding or Beyoncé is at my door. OR We ride at dawn for the revolution. Saying no. Leaving draining conversations where they belong. Letting people think I am being funny because honestly yes, I am being funny and also I am too good to go backwards in that way. Going to the doctor. Asking questions. Advocating for my health because I know my body. Creating joy on purpose. Laughing more. Resting more. Letting God love me through my own care. I am grateful to God for life abundantly, not just “I made it through another day” life, but abundant life. Black woman joy life. Coming home to my body life. I am not just losing weight. I am releasing what I carried when I thought carrying everything was the only way to be loved.

I am excited for the summer solstice and whats in store for Q3. See you later gators! Stay blessed.