I ran into my youngest uncle yesterday. He stands a striking, but inviting 6’7″ and has always been nothing short of magical to me and my brother. He ordered suits from Japan and lived far away in what was then the mysterious city of New York. He was colossal and accessible in the way only a Fun Uncle can be. His gifts were always educational, and frequently centered around financial literacy–something that left them ignored by some of his nieces and nephews.
I’ll never forget the year he gave out copies of a book on financial education and buried a bit of cash deep in the pages. Not all of us found it.
As long as I can remember, he talked of how any of us could be entrepreneurs…not just owning our own businesses, but creating businesses that changed things–he did this with a simulatenous respect for Black creation and understanding of general business trends. When he asked yesterday, how my freelancing was going and I told him, his response, as always, was that I was doing a great job and that I should just keep going to get away from being owned by a company. Support like that is immeasureably valuable…something that I hear most mainstream entrepreneurs echo on a regular basis.
Since we’re in holiday season, I’ve had chance to catch up on my ever-growing podcast backlog and as usual, I heard much of the importance of support. I was also reminded of just how many (straight, White, male) entrepreneurs thank their wives specifically for the role they’ve played in their journey. It’s something I tweeted on a bit a while back and wanted to post here, primarily because as freelancers, we need to acknowledge exactly how different our support systems look, especially in communities not centered around a nuclear family, especially in situations where marriage translates differently for us, and especially if we want to cultivate that support in healthy and productive ways. (please ignore the typos…they’re driving me nuts, but I trust y’all to forgive me.)
Thank you so much for this. Especially after reading the article about Black millennial poverty on The Atlantic and the struggles our age group faces with income being expected to spread thin to cover multiple family members, issues, communities…and then on top of this having the burden of higher student loan debt while being less likely to be married and have generational wealth. I recognize that my primary support group for what I do are not blood relatives nor am I married. I am thankful I have people supporting me, especially emotionally, because doing independent work, let alone being at the hell of a company, is so hard without this.
I’m impressed you got that entire twitter timeline into one image!
Oh wow, you were so on point with this…not suprisingly, I follow a lot of white guys on Twitter, and I usually glance over subtle things like this….when I see tweets about wives and taking family trips, it’s easy just to take for granted that “well, that doesn’t apply to me” and keep it moving, but I never stop to think, “okay, so what does apply to me?” On the rare occasion that I have stopped and thought about it, I’ve gotten depressed because I feel like such an outlier already since I’m a black woman. On top of that, I’m a black woman who live in a country that the majority of the people I follow will never think visit…I mean if the point of being a freelancer is to earn a decent living on your own terms, then why do I feel negatively about being a black woman living overseas? lol. These are things I have to stop and think about. And I really should start affirming myself and my position in life more often. No, I’m not married, I don’t have a mortgage, I’m not college educated, and I don’t even live in America right now…but it makes me no less worthy at succeeding at this. Having and maintaining a support system has been rough being so far from home, but then again I’m not all that close to my family to begin with. But I have been seeing more and more messages lately about the importance of support. Man, soooo much to think about.