It's Not Easy to Step Away From the Fight When the Cause Is So Crucial.But It's the Best Thing I Ever Did.

Take it from me-there is power in the pause.

- RACHEL CARGLE

My body felt weathered. My skin and lymphatic system screamed with signs of inflammation. I'd been feeling an impossible tightness in my neck and shoulders and explosive pressure in my lower back.

It was the summer of 2021, and I was at an appointment I'd booked with a chiropractor. As he felt across my body, looking for a place to begin, he locked eyes with me and said there wasn't much he could do until I spoke with my therapist, who might be able to address what had me so tight in the first place. Not even a week later, my dermatologist said that stress was most likely causing the flare-ups on my skin. My mind, heart, and body had been on fire with the rage and heartache that consumed me as I'd navigated the landscape of racism each and every day for the past five years.

My Black feminist awakening happened in 2017 after a photo of me at the January 21 Women's March went viral. I was confronted online by people in the Black community who insisted I consider how the mainstream feminist movement, the ideology that led to the event, discarded and dismissed Black women. I began to study the history and uncovered heartbreaking evidence of how time and time again, white women protected their whiteness over their womanhood at the expense of the women of color fighting alongide them.