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Personal Reflection

Fear has always been there for me — not loud, not always sharp, but persistent. Like background static I’ve mistaken for intuition. And for a long time, I measured my strength by how little I felt that fear.

But Audre Lorde doesn’t tell us to wait for fear to leave.
She tells us to anchor ourselves in vision — to shift the focus from what frightens us to what drives us. That’s a harder, quieter kind of strength. One that doesn’t need applause.

When I think about my own vision — the one that’s just under the surface, waiting for me to commit — I realize it’s never fear that’s stopped me. It’s the belief that my fear disqualified me. That strength had to feel like certainty.

But Lorde redefines it:
Power isn’t the absence of fear.
It’s the decision to act in spite of it.
To speak when silence would be safer.
To create even when the world shrugs.
To dare — not because we aren’t afraid—but because something deeper won’t let us retreat.

And that’s the moment fear becomes irrelevant.
Not gone. Just… quieter.

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Reflective Prompt

What vision is waiting for you to stop asking for permission and start acting with conviction?