The Courage It Takes to Slow Down
I keep coming back to courage to slow down because it gives me a way to think about the life I am building in real time. This is not a grand theory from a distance. It is something I notice while moving through the inner life, the public choices, and the small acts of courage that make a woman feel whole.
Slowing down is not giving up
What pulls me in is usually a small detail. A person pausing before they speak. A meal arriving with more history than the menu explains. A street corner that feels different at noon than it does at dusk. A woman choosing herself in a way that looks quiet from the outside but feels enormous from within.
Those small details matter because they reveal how people actually live. They show values, pressure, memory, access, class, gender, and tenderness without needing to announce themselves. I trust the ordinary because the ordinary rarely lies for long.
This connects naturally with women and rest, solo travel confidence, and Black women storytellers. I do not see these as separate boxes. Food, travel, culture, rest, storytelling, and women’s lives keep meeting each other in the same rooms.
The pressure to keep proving
Every time I slow down enough to notice, I see people more clearly. I see who is doing the work, who is being welcomed, who is being ignored, and who is creating beauty with limited room. That matters to me because I do not want to write only about what looks good. I want to write about what is true.
In 2018, I am thinking more and more about how easy it is to consume experiences without honoring the people behind them. A restaurant, a market, a park, a tour, or a neighborhood can all be enjoyable, but enjoyment should not make me careless. Pleasure and responsibility can sit together.
Rest as a brave choice
Practical tools have their place. Depending on the moment, I may use Calm for quiet practice and my Amazon shop for tools that support everyday living. But I never want the link, the product, or the booking to become the whole point. The point is to move through the world with more care, more ease, and more attention.
When I plan better, I can be more present. When I rest, I can listen better. When I eat with context, I enjoy the meal more. When I travel slowly, I stop treating places like backdrops and start treating them like homes that belong first to other people.
What pace teaches me
The lesson I keep finding is that a meaningful life is built through attention. Not perfection. Not performance. Attention. The kind that asks what something reveals, who it affects, and why it deserves care.
That is what I want DG Speaks to hold: stories that begin with lived experience and open into something bigger. A table can become a lesson. A street can become a mirror. A quiet choice can become a declaration.
You might also enjoy DG Speaks Travel, DG Speaks Food, and DG Speaks Culture.
