Being Brave Is Not The Same As Being Alright

A few years ago, I walked into an airport bookstore looking for something to occupy my mind on a four-hour flight to LA. Queenie, an orange book with yellow letters, caught my eye. After reading the first few pages, I decided it was a win.

I never finished that book. To be honest, I couldn’t get past the first chapter. But when I saw it had been adapted into a show on Hulu, I figured I should give it another try — just in a different form.

I sat down on my bed to watch the first episode and by the end of the night, I had finished the entire season.

It’s an interesting take on a Black girl in the UK and her love life. The main character, played by Dionne Brown, does a beautiful job of inhabiting the emotions of a young Black woman navigating relationships, dating, and the quiet ache of unresolved family trauma.

The Jamaican culture woven into the show is hilariously reminiscent of what it’s like to be first-gen with foreign parents — the little nuances in how they interact with you, the subtle insults that come from a place of tough love. Black foreign parents across the diaspora speak to their children like they’ve had beef with them in a previous life and I love it.

The authenticity of the show draws you in — from the music to the small family moments to the awkward dinners steeped in secrets. Questions about where our lives are going. Comments on who we’re dating. Observations about our bodies and whether we’ve gained or lost weight.

But the show is much deeper than its surface humor and culture. Queenie carries a surprising emotional thread around a mother–daughter dynamic that feels important, familiar, and painfully true.

It reveals how so many of our current traumas and dysfunctional patterns are rooted in childhood — experiences with our parents, our classmates, our siblings. The wounds we normalized because we didn’t know any better.

There’s a moment where Queenie sits in a room with her mother after a long stretch of bad decisions and painful realizations about her past.

She later speaks to her therapist about this:

“I’m a strong Black woman and I don’t need anything,” she says.

Her therapist responds, “Sounds like you were always made to feel like you were the problem.Being strong usually means covering things up. There’s no room for feelings. Being brave isn’t the same thing as being alright.”

Such a huge statement for women everywhere and black women specifically. Because we are always, always, so brave.

We take on life and the judgment that comes with being a Black woman, and dare to be ourselves anyway. We face the day when we’d rather hide. We push ourselves to be strong when we’d rather crumble in the arms of someone who wants to carry our burdens for us.

And in a sense, all of us who relate to being brave but not alright know the quiet denial that comes with living this way.

We’re often in denial about what we truly need to thrive — which sometimes is just a damn nap. We’re in denial about the support we require in order to be well. We’re in denial about the truth our bodies are trying to tell us because we’re just trying so hard to keep going.

Those words resonated deeply with me. I can recall so many days I show up because I have to, not because I want to. In the hardest moments of motherhood, I give myself quiet pep talks to remind myself I can keep going — that I’ll make it through the moment if I focus on one step at a time.

As I write this, I am e x h a u s t e d. I’ve been waking up the past few days doing my best to face the day. The inner turmoil, the busyness, the stress — it breaks us down. It catches up to us. And no matter how strong we are, we’re no match for what trauma and exhaustion does to the body.

Choosing to keep going every day is brave — but also a quiet confession of how tempting it is to stay in bed and disappear from the demands of life.

This show, and this reflection, is a reminder that being brave is not the same as being okay. A reminder I needed so I can assess what it would take for me to actually be okay.

There’s also a scene where Queenie’s grandmother learns she turned to a therapist for help. Her grandmother — an old-school Jamaican woman — berates her for going, insisting family business should stay in the family. But when her grandmother talks privately with her grandfather, he gently suggests that maybe they should have talked more instead of holding everything in.

The grandmother has a visible moment of grief. It’s as if every secret she ever swallowed rushes to the surface through tears she can no longer hold back.

In all our attempts to be brave, we keep ourselves held hostage. Bravery without vulnerability doesn’t strengthen us — it silences us.

I’m learning that being brave is easy, you just keep going.
But being honest? That’s the hard part.

Honesty asks you to slow down, to listen to your body, to say the truth you’ve been avoiding. It asks you to stop surviving and start tending to yourself.

Maybe that’s the work now:
To stop confusing resilience with wellness.
To stop calling exhaustion “strength.”
To finally choose what makes us whole.