Unpacking Your Purse
Introducing a Coaching Practice
For Black women and femmes, the purse has always been a tool for sanctuary, safety, and status. No matter which environment we are in, our bag serves as an anchor and a comfort to get us through any challenges that come our way and we never put it down.
My bag has been heavy for a long time—filled with the emotional and spiritual baggage of at least a decade of consciously moving through institutions and relationships that couldn’t begin to know how to acknowledge or care for me.
When I was a kid, my lil’ purse was light. A tube of Lip Smackers lip balm that doubled as a protectant and snack, a stray goldfish or 2, a few scraps of paper, and a My Little Pony multi-colored pen. Less attached and less burdened, my purse was nothing but a delicate accessory to my freedom.
As I aged, my purse got heavier. Filled with “just in case” and “what if”. A repair kit in case my mask cracked, medication to save my last nerve, and an escape hatch to get out of hairy situations. My friends were much the same. I remember being in a girlfriend’s bathroom before the night out, watching her select a suitable brow pencil and gloss to add to her purse for the commute. Once the makeup was in, she began rummaging around under the bathroom sink, finally surfacing with a gallon of bleach. I waited and watched her empty eyeglass cleaning solution from a small spray bottle and refill it with bleach! When I finally released my “Girl, what the hell are you doing!?” She casually slipped the bottle into her bag and explained it was “for safety.” Our purses are the ground on which we prepare for the best and the worst.
Other times, it’s a catch-all for ourselves and those we move through the world with. 2 tampons just in case someone else needs one. Travel-size bug sprays in the summer with enough to share with the girlies at the park. I was sitting in the office with a coworker recently as they began the familiar dig and surfaced a jar of honey from a recent trip: “forgot my husband even put that in there!” Our purses can also serve as magnets for the things that others can’t or don’t want to carry.
All the while, our purse fill, not just with work or personal things, but also family things, financial things, friendship things. Our bags get heavy. It takes us longer and longer for our hands to find their way into the bottom of the bag, digging out a sanitizer, a salve to ease anxiety; a butter to cover the cracks (don’t be ashy); a pen and pad to capture inspiration or outrage; the feedback we couldn’t quite align to our experience; the name some called us that actually belongs to someone else; the tears we’ve been holding on to until we can make it to PTO; that memory of how things used to be. That stuff is heavy! Badu reminds us to be mindful of our backs carrying so much. Carrying a heavy purse weighs on us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It clogs up our systems and slows us down. In remembering a conversation I had with my best friend, DeAnna, about moving in with romantic partners, she described “just wanting to feel comfortable enough to put my bag down for a while.”
The more conversations I have with Black women, women of color, and other marginalized folks in the workplace especially, the more I realize how many of us carry more than we should and how often we need a space and safety to put down our purses, or at the very least unpack them. Therapy is a great first step but even as I suggest that I’m reminded of the resource that therapy offers for interior development and processing of the past. For me, therapy has been incredibly useful in healing and addressing stale mindsets and learning process stress and emotion in a healthy way and there is still something that therapy misses.
When I first started my current role, my boss shared that she’d wanted to offer some coaching sessions if I was interested. I liked the idea and assumed that would come later after I’d proven I was worthy of the investment through tenure and loyalty. Shockingly after 6 months, she supported me as I signed onto 6 sessions with my very own coach.
This was not like the executive coaching I’d known about. Nothing like the secret guru who would coach me to be my best corporate Black gal self. This coaching fits in perfect compliment to therapy as a way to explore and process current circumstances. This coach shone a light so that I could find the way forward.
The clarity that I gained in those first few sessions helped me realize that I too wanted to become a coach, to channel my empathy, intuition, and nurturing into a new skill. Over the last several months I’ve embarked on the certification path, gone through hours of training, and practiced A LOT thanks to the trust and support of my colleagues and manager. After much thought and honing, I’ve felt clear and strong in who I am as a coach and how I want to serve those who choose to be in partnership with me.
As I share the beginnings of my coaching practice with the world, my aim first is to provide a space for Black women, women of color, and gender-expansive folks, “to unpack their purse” to release, clear, organize all of the things we carry with us each day; to get better at identifying what we need to carry with us each day versus the things that no longer serve us. This is especially important for early career professionals or those who are at the beginning of a transition toward a more aligned feature where we might even feel safe enough to put our purses down for a moment.
I am excited to offer a limited number of free career coaching sessions as I finalized the ICF certification process. If you want to learn more about career coaching, want to “unpack your purse” with me, or know more about my journey please connect with me.
