How to laugh, build, and thrive while the system sharpens its knives.

Let me reintroduce myself.

They say America is the land of opportunity. Sure. If you’re not me. My version of opportunity usually comes with a side of paperwork, surveillance, and somebody explaining why I should be grateful for not just less but erasure, because the history of my people is considered “divisive” and labeled “counterproductive.” True story.

I wake up every day knowing the game was rigged before I even stepped onto the field. That is not self-pity. That is clarity. America has always been a hostile landscape for people who look like me, and in this regime, the hostility is no longer whispered. It is policy, it is law, it is the daily background noise of life. If you are a Black woman in America right now, you already know what I mean. The air feels heavier, the rules feel sharper, and survival takes a different kind of choreography.

My why is simple. I want to live. Not just survive on scraps, not just be tolerated in spaces built to erase me. I want to thrive in my fullness, in my brilliance, in my refusal to be small. I want to be financially free enough that no system, no boss, no politician can choke the air out of my lungs. I want security that is not dependent on the goodwill of men who believe my existence is a mistake. I want joy that cannot be confiscated. And I want to build it in plain sight, even while the system upgrades its tricks to keep me down.

This is not paranoia. This is pattern recognition. You cannot watch entire communities lose their schools, their clinics, their jobs, and their voices, and still pretend this is all accidental. You cannot watch the erasure of women, the silencing of journalists, the rewriting of rights, and still cling to illusions of safety. The regime we live under is not content with control. It wants obedience. And for Black women, that obedience has always meant invisibility.

So here is the why again: I refuse to be erased.

But refusing is not enough. I have to move differently. I have to play the game while knowing the referees are bought and the scoreboard is rigged. My how begins with honesty. I know this system is not built for me to win. I know it is built to break me, to drain me, to demand more labor and offer less return. So I adapt. I treat knowledge like currency. I treat strategy like oxygen. And I build pockets of freedom wherever I can find them.

Financial security is not just about money. It is about leverage. I create streams of income that do not rely on approval from people who would rather see me beg. I invest in myself, in my skills, in my capacity to create value that cannot be censored or outsourced. I teach myself the moves that were never meant for me to learn, because the fewer gatekeepers between me and my freedom, the safer I become.

But thriving is more than stacking coins. Thriving means insisting on authenticity in a world that tells me authenticity is dangerous. It means being my true self, loudly and unapologetically, while also reading the room and understanding that survival sometimes requires subtlety. That balance is not weakness. That balance is brilliance. It is knowing when to speak and when to let silence do the work. It is being able to switch between visibility and invisibility without losing my center.

Some might call that double consciousness. I call it survival fluency. The ability to navigate hostile terrain while keeping my soul intact. The ability to show up as myself in spaces that were not built for me, without surrendering to their distortions of who I should be.

And here’s where humor kicks in. Humor is not my escape. It is my scalpel. If America is going to play clown, I reserve the right to roast it. You can legislate my body, but you cannot stop me from pointing out the absurdity of a country that bans books faster than it bans guns. You can strip my rights, but you cannot stop me from laughing at the fact that the people who call me “angry” are the same ones losing sleep over drag queens. Humor is how I breathe. Humor is how I cut through the fog of nonsense. Humor is my proof of life.

There is a reason Black women have always been at the forefront of resistance. We know how to make fire out of ashes. We know how to turn scarcity into abundance. We know how to create joy where the world insists there should only be grief. That knowledge is our inheritance, and it is also our weapon.

The truth is, I am not waiting for America to suddenly wake up and value me. That day may never come. My focus is on building the kind of life that cannot be legislated away. The kind of security that cannot be undone by one election cycle. The kind of joy that outsmarts oppression.

And yes, that includes the work I do here and now. My online business is not just an LLC. It is a declaration. My newsletter is not just content. It is a living record. The products I sell, the words I write, the communities I build, all of it flows from one belief: survival is not enough. My work is where commerce meets resistance, where truth disguises itself as branding, where joy sells out faster than fear. If you think I’m just running a store, you are not paying attention.

I thrive by remembering that my existence itself is disruption. Every dollar I earn, every word I write, every boundary I set is an act of defiance. I thrive by protecting my body, my mind, and my time from being consumed by systems that feed on exhaustion. I thrive by laughing when the world expects me to break. I thrive by telling the truth, even if I wrap it in wit and cleverness so subtle that the very people who fear it cannot see it coming.

And yes, I thrive by planning. By building not only for myself but for the ones who will come after me. Legacy is not a luxury. It is a shield. The more I can create that lives beyond me, the less this regime can claim victory.

So if you ask me how I move in a country like this, I will tell you: with clarity, with strategy, with humor sharp enough to cut glass, and with a refusal to ever forget my worth. My why is survival. My how is brilliance. My outcome will be freedom. Even here. Even now. Especially now.

Because if the system wants me small, the most radical thing I can do is to live big. And laugh louder while I do it.

 

Written by: Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

Editor & Writer, The Commons Dispatch