The Proverbs 31 Program

You were taught to work for what you were born to attract.

Women were trained for labor, not pleasure.

Not in so many words. No one ever stood in front of me and said, you are not allowed to enjoy yourself.

They didn’t have to. The lesson was quieter than that. More effective.

It came wrapped in scripture. In praise. In respectability.

In the woman who “works willingly with her hands.”

In the wife who “rises while it is yet night.”

In the virtue of productivity dressed up as holiness.

The Proverbs 31 woman is celebrated for her output.

Her usefulness and endurance.

What she is not praised for is joy.

A Life Built on Being Impressive

I learned early that intellect was currency. Degrees. Titles. Achievements. A clean, disciplined life that could not be questioned.

I stayed away from professions and lifestyles where my presence and beauty were considered value. I was taught that those were lesser paths. Dangerous ones. Paths for women who did not have “enough sense.”

So I chose seriousness.

I chose rigor.

I chose being impressive.

I learned to lead with my mind and to tuck away everything else. My sensuality. My magnetism. My appetite for beauty and pleasure and ease.

I told myself I was being responsible.

I told myself I was being spiritual.

I told myself I was being grown.

But underneath all of it was a quieter question I never allowed myself to ask.

What am I proving?

And to whom?

When Labor Becomes Identity

Proverbs says she considers a field and buys it.

That she plants a vineyard with the fruit of her hands.

That her lamp does not go out at night.

We quote these lines as aspiration, but never with an interrogatory lens.

What happens when a woman’s entire worth is measured by how much she produces?

What happens when rest feels like failure and pleasure feels suspicious…uncomfortable?

The Proverbs 31 program trains women to believe that virtue lives in exhaustion. That visibility must be earned through labor. That being respectable matters more than being alive.

So women are reared to become reliable.

Dependable.

Unbreakable.

And quietly starved.

The Neglect of the Self

I did not neglect my passions because they were unimportant.

I neglected them because I was afraid of what “they” might say about me.

I had been taught that sensuality undermined credibility. That beauty should never be leveraged intentionally. That ease was something you earned only after suffering.

But the truth I had to confront was this:

Using your natural gifts is not anti-intellectual.

In fact, it is supreme intelligence to use God-given power, whether it be beauty, athleticism, or humor.

Provers 18:16 states “A person’s gift makes room for them and brings them before great men.” Yet this verse is almost exclusively interpreted through the lens of labor, productivity, and exertion.

When a woman’s gift manifests as beauty, presence, or social magnetism, is it rarely recognized as legitimate capital. Instead, she is encouraged to compensate with grind, as though ease disqualifies the gift itself.

Knowing how to move through the world with presence, intuition, discernment, and magnetism is a form of wisdom our mothers were not allowed to claim. A mysticism that only women possess. So, they taught us to mistrust it.

I was living a life that looked righteous and felt dry.

The Cage of Respectability

The Proverbs 31 woman is praised at the gates.

But she is also contained there.

She is applauded for how well she serves systems that were never built to serve her back. She is celebrated for holding everything together while never being held.

Respectability has always been a survival strategy for Black women. But survival is not the same as living. Survival does not equal joy.

There comes a moment when you have to ask whether the life you built is actually yours or simply acceptable.

Reclaiming What Was Never Sinful

Pleasure is not a moral failure.

Beauty is not a distraction.

Ease is not laziness.

These are just rhetoric from those who wonder how we make it look so damn easy.

The problem was never that women wanted too much.

It was that we were taught to want so little for ourselves.

I am no longer interested in a holiness that requires my disappearance. I am no longer committed to a life where my body, my desire, and my presence are treated as liabilities instead of gifts.

The Proverbs 31 program taught me how to work.

It did not teach me how to receive.

That part I had to unlearn on my own.

A Different Invitation

If you are reading this and recognizing yourself, know this.

You are not broken.

You are over conditioned.

And there is another way to live that does not require you to abandon your depth, your beauty, or your pleasure in order to be taken seriously.

Work With Me

I work one on one with women who are ready to dismantle the labor-based identity they were handed and build a life that honors their full intelligence.

This is for women who are done performing respectability and ready to reclaim discernment, desire, and sovereignty.

If this piece unsettled you, that’s your signal.

You can learn more about working with me privately here.