I can’t speak for all Black women, but I know this much—I don’t owe a motherfucker an explanation about anything in my life.

I was a mother to two children by the age of twenty-one. I received welfare assistance. I didn’t get my GED until I was twenty-seven. I know what it means to start late, to struggle, to feel like the whole world already wrote your story before you even had a chance to pick up the pen.

I raised my children. I kept learning. I kept growing. I went from a young woman just trying to survive to a crone who understands her own power, her own mind, and her own worth.

But here’s the thing about me: I kept going.

People love to sit around and judge women’s lives like they’re commentators at a damn sporting event. They want to debate our choices, our bodies, our relationships, our timelines. As if we are public property. As if our lives are community projects open for critique.

No ma’am.

My life has been built step by step, mistake by mistake, lesson by lesson. I earned every ounce of wisdom I have. Every scar taught me something. Every setback sharpened me.

And now that I’m older, wiser, and fully comfortable in my own skin, the last thing I’m about to do is stand in front of anybody explaining why I lived the life I lived.

I survived it.

I learned from it.

And I grew from it.

That’s explanation enough.

I don’t owe you shit.

Happy Women’s History Month to motherfucking me.