The Healing Poetic Podcast - R.I.S.E Series

I Refuse to Flatten Myself to be Successful

Keya

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0:00 | 16:35

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In this deeply honest and emotionally layered episode of The Healing Poetic Podcast, Keya McClain the Poet explores the unspoken pressure many Black women experience to flatten themselves in order to be accepted, understood, successful, or easier to manage.

Inspired by a short video that resonated deeply with her spirit, Keya opens up about the complexity of being a multifaceted Black woman navigating business, leadership, healing, relationships, and authenticity in a world that constantly attempts to place women into digestible categories and boxes.

This episode explores:
• The emotional exhaustion of constantly being interpreted
• Why layered women are often misunderstood
• The pressure to become “less emotional” in business
• The conflict between authenticity and performance
• Why Black women are often expected to shrink, soften, harden, or simplify themselves
• The loneliness that can come with being deeply nuanced
• The difference between “the box” and “the sky”

Keya also shares her personal experiences as a woman who is direct, empathic, funny, intentional, bold, emotionally intelligent, healing, evolving, and still human enough to not always have the answers.

This is a conversation for the women who are tired of being psychologically dissected for simply existing as full human beings.

You do not have to flatten yourself to be successful.
You do not have to perform perfection to be powerful.
And you do not have to fit inside someone else’s box when your spirit was designed for the sky.

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