Outdacious Enough to Take Up Space
Reclaiming Worth Beyond Usefulness: A Black Disabled Woman's Journey to Taking Up Space
I’ve watched too many women confuse usefulness with worth, and I already know how that story ends. It always starts small. You help once. You stay late because it needs doing. You answer the call nobody else wants to take. Before long, the entire operation is leaning on you like that was always the plan.
They don’t call it leadership. They say, “She’s got it.” They praise the outcome, not the labor. Everything runs smoothly, so nobody asks what it costs to keep it that way. Calm gets applauded while the body holding it together gets ignored—sore in places rest can’t reach.
I’ve lived that long enough to recognize it without needing receipts.
As a big Black disabled woman, I learned early that my body would be read before my words. Too much. Too visible. Too slow for their urgency and too steady for their comfort. I learned how quickly people will accept your labor while questioning your presence in the same breath.
People grow attached to the version of you that doesn’t ask questions. The one who fixes things quietly. The one who smooths everything over before anyone else has to sit with discomfort. That version is convenient. That version is manageable. That version will wear you down if you let her.
So when you finally sit back—when you stop jumping up the second something shifts, when you let silence sit where you used to rush in and patch things up—that’s when the whispering starts. They say you’re different now. They say you’ve changed. They say you’re not the same.
They’re right.
Because the old version was tired.
I didn’t leave the work. That part matters. I left the weight. The unpaid weight. The unacknowledged weight. The kind people only notice once it drops and makes a sound. I didn’t make a speech. I didn’t explain myself. I simply stopped carrying what was never assigned to me in the first place.
As a big Black disabled woman, I was trained to soften everything—to be grateful before being exact, to make my body and my truth easier to swallow. But soft doesn’t mean safe, and agreeable doesn’t mean protected. Sometimes it just means you’re being used politely and expected to be thankful for the opportunity.
Taking up space for me isn’t loud. It’s outdacious.
Outdacious looks like staying seated when you used to spring up. It looks like letting people feel the gap your overfunctioning used to cover. It looks like not explaining yourself to those who benefitted from your silence and mistook it for consent.
And yes, some people don’t like it.
They preferred me when my capacity covered their lack of planning. When my calm hid their mess. When my body absorbed what the system refused to fix. That version of me made life easier for everyone else.
She’s done.
I don’t shrink to keep rooms comfortable anymore. If a room feels tight, that’s information. Someone else needs to adjust. I’m finished folding myself smaller to make space for dysfunction.
Outdacious isn’t loud. It’s firm. It’s a big Black disabled woman sitting upright and refusing to disappear so others can stay comfortable.
If they only valued you when you were useful, they never valued you. And if taking up space bothers them now, it’s because you finally stopped laying down.
I’ve said what I said.
