Adena Jones, deputy managing editor at Bleacher Report, reflects on burning out from constantly proving herself as a Black woman in media. She traces it back to losing a high school class president race despite giving everything, and now operates at 100% all the time. She's learning to give herself grace through small acts: running, hair care, cloud-watching, and accepting she can't pour from an empty cup.
Hello. I'm Adina Jones. I was actually married in July, so we're working on that name changing. It's like the hardest thing ever. So I work at Bleacher Report. I'm the deputy managing editor there. And in an effort to get ready for this event, I did what any great journalist would do. I procrastinated. I learned the lyrics to Cardi B's "Bartier Cardi." I got in— not one, but two fights with my husband. I even researched one of those, like, really swaggy rehab facilities in upstate New York where, like, rich women go just to get away from the world because, you know, they're just— they're just tired. Because let me tell you something, I am tired. I'm tired. I'm not like, "I didn't get 8 hours of sleep last night" tired, or "I didn't have enough vegetables in my diet" tired. I'm like Fannie Lou Hamer, sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of the microaggressions. Um, you're just not a good fit for the team. Um, you know, just the cultural fit. I feel threatened when you speak to me. Uh, can I touch your hair? What is the URL for Black Twitter? I'm tired. I'm tired of the judgments. You look like you could fuck a dude up, like you lift, right? Or I bet you had athletic scholarship to school, right? You definitely did. I'm also tired of the judgments, the random judgments, the 10 things every woman in their 30s should know. Shit, I only know 2.5 of these. Okay, and I'm also, Women with bigger butts should be more intelligent. Well, I should be a Rhodes Scholar with all the educational background I got going on in here. So you know what it is, what I'm realizing? Why I'm tired? Life is happening to me and I'm letting it judo chop me in the throat. I saw some Instagram posts from an influencer selling flat tummy tea, and it was like, life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. "#fitspo, #loveandlight, hashtag hashtag hashtag." And you know, I was like, actually, I'm feeling what this person is saying. You know, I'm moving too fast. You know, I'm always trying to be the best, never settling for less, striving, just leaving it all out on the floor every day. That's why. But how is it me? Me, a strong black woman, me, the product of, a sharecropper's son from North Carolina letting this affect me? How is it me, the product of a bougie Black woman with a biology holdin' degree that will cut you in her finest fur, how is it that I'm letting this affect me? Like I said, I'm moving too fast. A quick jog of my memory will have me remember the first time that I just left it all on the floor. So, As you can see, my shirt says I'm from Brooklyn, but my mom did me the favor and moved me out to Brentwood High School for a better education at some point in time. And I ran for senior class president, and I was gonna win this year. The only problem was I lost every other year. Every damn year I ran for class president, I lost. But this year was gonna be different. I was gonna give them Obama change they could believe in. They didn't know what they were in for. I was pulling out all the stops. Flyers with my name on it and endorsements from the popular kids, check. Buttons with my face on it, check. Poster boards in every hallway, check. And was we doing cupcake giveaways at the end of every class period? Hell yeah, we were doing that, check. So then my pièce de résistance, what it was, is I had a group of the sassiest chicks Bretman High School had to offer. They were my campaign team. And yeah, I know, right? Campaign team in middle school. And I had a girl from every walks of life. We had the funny girl, the popular girl, the I do recreational drugs girl, the I'm from Queens and so that means I'm better than all you Long Island girls. And every Wednesday, it was campaign day. We wore t-shirts, red and white baseball tees, that, shout out to my dad for getting them for $3.99, and my mom for helping me bring them to school. And there on the front they said, "You know you want to," and on the back it said, "Vote for Adina." So yeah, I wasn't, we were going hard. Every Wednesday we preached the gospel of how great Adina was going to be. We were gonna do principal for a day. We were gonna do school trips to Six Flags. You're gonna air your grievances to the administration. It was on. We were gonna leave everything on the floor. If I lost this year, it wasn't because of what I didn't do, it's 'cause of what they didn't do. We were leaving it all on the floor. Everybody voted in their 8th period government class. I flocked to my school bus. I was like, "Yeah, I got this. We won this. We left it all on the floor. It's what we do." Get on the school bus, kids are like, "Hey, you vote today?" They talking to each other. "Yeah, I voted today. Who did you vote for?" I didn't vote for that Adina girl. She's stuck up. Wow. Like, since when did representing yourself become stuck up? Since when did doing any and everything you could do to win become stuck up? No, actually, they were wrong. They were just outliers in the sea of yes votes for Adina. Next day, homeroom is where we announce the winner. After all the mundane announcements, track practice, pool's closed, all that stuff. We got to the announcement for senior class president. And your 2000, what is it, 3? Yeah, 2003 senior class president is not Adina. Stab, stab, knife. Those are just an eighth of the emotions I felt running through my body. 20 kids in my homeroom staring at the back of my neck. I know they're waiting for me to react. You know what? Not gonna react. Instead, I'm gonna go to my locker and cry on the phone with my mom and just talk about how stupid everybody was. I'm not actually sure when I got over the loss of my election. Honestly, I'm probably still salty about it. Congratulations to Mark Parker, he won. The one thing that I did rest easy with was that I did everything I could, right? I did everything I could. If I go back today, I wouldn't change it for the world. I left it all out on the floor. And honestly, it's kind of how I live my daily life, sometimes to my detriment, because when you go at 100, what do you have left? But that's me every day and every moment. I'm just there trying to prove, trying to grow, trying to live. You best believe if I'm in a room with you, you're going to get the best of me and I'm gonna take every single piece of juice I can squeeze out of that moment. He feels it. But the fact is that as I grow, I'm learning, I'm leaving it all on the floor, but I'm not leaving my self-worth. I'm not leaving my sanity. That's the biggest thing. I'm learning to self-care. Self-care means on-time runs in the park. Self-care means deep conditioning and detangling my new natural hair. Self-care means bottles of rosé. Self-care, sometimes it just means staring at the clouds, you know? So I'm always gonna be that girl, that woman, who goes 100% and 100 miles per hour, but I'm always gonna continue to learn to give myself grace in those quiet moments in the locker room, and I hope you do the same. Thank you.
