Thoughts from my notes app on Black Women, Innocence, and The Fool

Y’all want Black women on our knees so bad.

How can you want to be fed from our bosoms, eat off our backs, draw from our labor, our intuition, our bodies — while simultaneously being so pressed by the fact that we exist at all. And especially when we exist outside the boxes you keep trying to trap us in.

Historically, Black women were used as non-consenting vessels.
For birth.
For nourishment.
For labor.
For care.
For sex.

Midwives. Wet nurses. Caretakers. Bodies exploited to sustain entire systems that refused to recognize our humanity. And that history didn’t disappear — it just shape-shifted.

You want us to give you everything we’ve got and not be compensated for it. You want access without accountability. You want the fruit, but not the root.

Give us what you got — but live out of a paper box. Where they do that at?

And because the world moves like this toward us, we learn early that innocence is rarely afforded to Black folks — and especially not to Black women.

We are rarely assumed harmless. Rarely assumed pure. Rarely assumed capable of growth without punishment.

So we adapt.

And sometimes — this part is uncomfortable — we protect each other by downplaying the leap before it even starts. By poking holes in the dream early. By questioning joy before it has a chance to stretch its legs.

Is that protection? Or is it fear wearing wisdom’s clothes?

If innocence is rarely something afforded to us by the world, is that why we struggle to allow it for each other?

I noticed this recently when someone brought up a story about people who stole in the past. I said, well, I’m assuming they’ve grown and changed. And the response was immediate: not likely.

I found myself scolding them like somebody’s mama. Because why are we so invested in freezing people in who they used to be? That’s part of the innocence problem too.

Innocence isn’t just about being untouched. It’s about being allowed to change.

And here’s the part I keep coming back to: they don’t even need those laws the same way anymore.

They built laws to contain us — to regulate our bodies, our labor, our reproduction, our movement, our pleasure. And over time, that containment got passed down and internalized.

Now we do it to ourselves.

We second-guess the leap before anyone tells us not to jump. We shrink the vision before anyone calls it unrealistic. We warn each other to be careful, to temper joy, to not get too big, too hopeful, too visible.

That didn’t come out of nowhere. That’s what happens when propaganda works.

When a system trains you long enough, it doesn’t have to stand over you anymore. You start anticipating punishment. You start managing risk before it even appears. You start containing yourself.

And that’s the quiet violence — not just the laws themselves, but how thoroughly they taught us to forget what we’re capable of.

This is where The Fool keeps showing up for me.

The Fool is the one who steps forward without guarantees. The one who risks being misunderstood. The one who believes something new might be possible anyway.

But Black women are taught that unguarded hope is dangerous. That faith without armor will get you hurt. That joy without strategy is irresponsible.

So we repaint ourselves. We harden. We explain ourselves before anyone asks. We shrink the dream so it won’t hurt as much if it’s taken.

And because we’re so afraid of being hurt again, we start cutting our own crowns off. We lose balance at the crown chakra — the very place where divine guidance, imagination, and God-intelligence flow. We close ourselves off from receiving. From trusting what moves through us. From remembering that we are not just surviving bodies, but conduits.

The Fool is ruled by the crown, reminds us of this.

Not recklessness — but openness. Not naivety — but divine curiosity. Not stupidity — but trust in something larger than fear.

And listen — the instinct to armor up has kept us alive. I’m not dismissing that. But survival is not the same thing as living.

At some point, innocence has to be reclaimed — not as ignorance, but as permission. Permission to try. Permission to fail. Permission to grow. Permission to receive guidance without suspicion. Permission to experience joy without bracing for impact.

The Fool isn’t stupid. The Fool is brave.

The question I want us to sit with is why we allow people who had to rig the game to dictate our relationship to innocence, joy, hope, and possibility.
How do you cheat and still not win?

Some more questions to sit with:

• Where did you learn to contain yourself before anyone asked you to?
• Who benefits when Black women cut themselves off from divine guidance?
• In what ways do we “protect” each other — and where does that protection quietly limit our becoming?
• What does it look like to tend to your crown instead of cutting it off?
• Where is The Fool asking you to trust what’s coming through you?

xoxo,

Empress Theadora