Op-Ed: Who Are You When Success No Longer Defines You?

I wasn’t even born when Janet Jackson released “The Pleasure Principle” on her 1986 album Control . Forty years later, those same two words have become the closest thing I have to a philosophy of life. Indulge me, please. Black women have mastered survival. Our history has all but demanded it. We have learned how to stretch a dollar, navigate instability, and keep moving even when the ground beneath us shifts. And over the past few years, we’ve been called to do it all over again. The first wave was disruption, as layoffs swept industries where many Black women had spent years building careers and making significant contributions. The second wave was reinvention, as more of us turned toward entrepreneurship , consulting, and self-made opportunities when traditional paths became less reliable. And now, we are entering a third. This next phase is not primarily about how we earn. It involves how intentional we are with our energy, time, and effort. Once you have proven that you can survive, adapt, and create opportunity for yourself, a different question begins to surface: What happens when work no longer reflects who you are? The first two waves were visible. You could point to the layoffs, the career pivots, the businesses being launched and documented in real time. But this third wave is harder to see, because it is happening internally. For many Black women, work has never been only about income. It has also been about meaning . Achievement provided direction. Titles provide…