Don’t Save Me. See Me
Photo Credit: visualspace via iStockPhoto.com
By: Jamila Gomez
There’s a difference between needing help and needing to be witnessed. A lot of us—especially young Black adults—aren’t out here begging to be saved. We’re not waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue us. We’ve learned how to survive. How to patch ourselves up. How to smile when we’re breaking. What we want—what we deserve—is to be seen.
To be seen in the moments when we’re holding it together with frayed threads. To be seen in the spaces where we’re healing, even if the healing is slow, messy, or invisible to everyone else. We don’t need anyone to tell us how to fix our lives—we’ve had enough advice. What we need is someone who can hold space for us without trying to change us. Someone who sees the effort beneath the silence. Someone who can look past the performance and say, “I know it took everything for you to show up today. I see that.”
Too often, we feel like we have to earn our worth through productivity or perfection. That if we’re not thriving, we’re failing. That if we’re not performing joy, we’re a burden. So we shrink. We smile. We keep going. But inside, we’re just wishing someone would notice. Not to fix us. Just to acknowledge the weight we carry.
This is especially true when you’re doing inner work that no one can see. Healing childhood wounds. Breaking cycles. Choosing peace over chaos. Setting boundaries. Unlearning how to abandon yourself. That kind of work doesn’t come with applause. But it deserves recognition. And even if no one around you is clapping for your quiet transformation, it doesn’t mean it’s not real.
So if you’ve been showing up for yourself in ways that no one knows about—if you’ve been choosing to stay, choosing to try, choosing to keep breathing when it would’ve been easier to shut down—that matters. You matter.
You don’t need to be rescued. You’ve already made it through things that were meant to break you. What you need—what we all need—is to be reminded that our becoming is valid, even when it’s unseen.
You don’t want to be saved. You just want to be seen. And you are.
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