Sarah Jakes Roberts

People look at you and there's pity and there's shame and you begin to believe there's something wrong with me.

And, you know, people, you know how babies come, right?

So you have sex, you get pregnant, like the math is there.

And so now I'm like, you're also stupid because how did you let this happen?

And that's all I ate for years as it relates to identity and self-esteem.

You're dumb, you're stupid, you're nasty, like over and over again, over and over again.

So how does that show up in my present now, though I've done the work and the healing and the praying and the meditating?

I think there are still moments where I wonder, like, are you really good enough for this moment?

I would rather not do it at all than to risk disappointing people.

But when I overcome those feelings of self-doubt and of just not believing in myself, there's this other flip side of it where it's like you've kind of already taken some of the biggest L's you could take.

So like if a podcast flops, it's not going to break you.

You know what I mean?

Like when you have hit rock bottom, there is this temptation to stay there so that you never have to experience the collision again.

Or there is this belief that you can tap into that says,

if this is truly as low as it can get, whether it's a teen pregnancy, it's grief, it's addiction, if this is the lowest it can get, then me sharing my voice on a platform, then me trying to start a business, if it doesn't work, it won't kill me because that was literally designed to kill me.

There are very few people who can say they've gone through things that were literally designed to kill them.

And if you manage to survive those things, I believe you owe it to your survival to dare to live again.

And that living again can be big and bold where you're doing something that has a huge platform, or it could be the smallest thing of waking up this morning, taking a shower, going outside and seeing what's happening in the world.

but you owe it to yourself to try to live again.

What I seek to do is to help women understand, like, I'm just bait.