The Hardest Job You’ll Ever Love: Being Yourself

Slogans surround us with constant reminders to be ourselves. Be authentic. Be human beings, not human doings.

If it were that easy, we wouldn’t need the reminders. We don’t need T-shirts reminding our hearts to beat or our lungs to take air. Being is built into the very title of who we are—and yet we are constantly challenged and reminded at the same time. A complex paradox.

If I’m being honest, those quotes and T-shirts don’t feel like encouragement. They feel like a taunt. A reminder of something we’re told to be but rarely given the space to become. We’re sold the idea that people who choose to be must shave their heads, lay prostrate, and deny everything else. As if I have to deny everything to become what I came into this world as.

In a world fueled by faster, louder, and shinier, being yourself is not a prized asset. It’s quite dangerous. And it requires a different kind of work.

Before we name the work—can we just sit with this one more time?

Why in the hell do I have to work to be who I already am?

I didn’t ask myself that question until the day I told Corporate goodbye.

I left quietly, at the top of my game. Standing in front of a room of homogeneous faces with shared experiences and pedigree. At the other end of the mahogany table, surrounded by high-backed leather chairs, there was me. The uneducated expert.

I had been here before. And I was happy this was my last meeting explaining how a multi-billion-dollar corporation could get out of its own way and transition into a new way of doing business with higher margins. The Board would be overjoyed.

As I stood there—the only, only (Black, woman)—I told myself this was the last time I needed to perform. I was shedding an identity built over decades of sweat and toil.

A month later, I found myself trying to put down the identity of the Corporate Mammy. The Savior. The Black woman who isn’t always angry—but really is.

The identity did not want to leave.

I slept. I cried. I wandered around aimless.

Long dinners with friends, days full of conversation and catching up—none of it quieted the creeping identity crisis I believed I had conquered years before.

I thought I had it figured out.

I would build a consultancy and show them it was possible to make the change in the industry I had come to love. The industry I adored because it accepted me without the requirements others had.

What I realized is that I held brilliance no degree could extend. I had allowed that brilliance to be consumed—while being reminded, even by myself, that I was an outsider who made her way in. I was lucky to be there. And now this outsider was going to move from Savior to Change Agent in one fell swoop.

It felt obvious. People knew me. They trusted me. I just needed one meeting for them to see my value.

And there it was: for them to see my value.

That was the truthful lie I told myself. I began to build a business on the foundational need to be seen for the role I no longer wanted to play. The realization cracked me open—painful, yes, but it sent me on a journey I refused to let last longer than a few days.

The Realization

Two days, a few tears, tarot spreads, shadow work, and a lot of self-inquiry later—I got there. Well, kinda.

It was a random scroll on LinkedIn. A creator shared how founders could use Claude to build a business. I’d seen it before and thought: I knoooooow, I’m doing this, duh. But something said: look closer.

The first recommended prompt hit me like a ton of bricks:

“Share the type of business you’re building. Show me five ways this business could fail.”

The orange asterisk Anthropic logo pulsed. Words rolled across my iPhone like a smack from a Chicago January wind—without notice, and rather painful.

I read them slowly at first, then with increasing momentum. There was nothing said I didn’t already know. Claude became a mirror, which felt like a side-eye. It named every truth I was avoiding.

I had built a business assuming the same people who were slow to change would be quick to buy. Why? Because it was me—the go-to girlie. The Savior. Your fly-ass Corporate Mammy. I leaned on market data that supported my optimism and ignored the risks staring me in the face.

I didn’t do the very thing I do for my clients.

Damn, gurl.

I adjusted my Beats and let Alex Isley take over—take me to the moon, send me into orbit. I needed the escape.

More conversations with Claude—Jean-Claude, as I call him—brought me back to myself.

Yes, it was an LLM that had to remind me who the fuck I was. In a moment where these tools are known to hallucinate and forget what you just said, he laid it all out with uncomfortable clarity. Like a wise Auntie who doesn’t let you get away with your own nonsense. Like someone gave Claude a healthy mixed dose of Madea, Viola Davis, and Angela Bassett in one voice.

He earned his $20 that day.

I leaned back on the Lloyd Wright–inspired concrete chair. What the fuck did I just do?

Did I just blow up my life?

For about 38.9 seconds, it felt like I had.

A walk through the park. Alex reminding me to be with the stars. The sun and the melody together lifted something.

The tears came quick and vanished with the same urgency—a cleansing. Here I was claiming freedom while steadily building the same cage I had just escaped.

In that moment, two things became clear.

The first: I caught a glimpse—just a glimpse—of how people return to what harms them. How familiar patterns can feel safer than the unknown. I won’t pretend to understand the full weight of that experience, but I felt its pull. May everyone experiencing any form of abuse feel the loving energy I sent into the universe that afternoon.

The second: I excel at sales. But I looooove organizational strategy, design, and most importantly humans. I have the wild belief that humans should love where they work.

Allow me to be clear: humans do not have to love who they work for to love where they work. I cannot stop capitalism, tech bros, or bad managers. But I can design a world where individual contributors have autonomy in their work. I can align with people who want to do right by their employees.

The Remembrance

Years ago, a Managing Director put me on a wildly visible project. My job: redesign an entire organization. Two hundred people. Seventy thousand sellers impacted. Six months. As a side project to my actual job.

Yes. You read that correctly.

It was the most challenging and rewarding work I’ve done. And I loved every bit of it.

I overcame so much. Learned I loved something I didn’t even know I could love.

And still—I didn’t claim it.

I stayed in a role that defined me differently. The sales leader who “fixed things on the side.”

I turned my actual brilliance into a side hustle inside my own career.

SMH.

That moment in the park didn’t break me. It clarified me.

I don’t have to sell to the people I thought I did. I don’t have to hold the role and title I’ve always held. I don’t have to struggle to earn my way into a room. I don’t have to convince people who have no intention of listening to hear my message.

There is an entire world of people who don’t know my track record, my quirks, or my history—and they don’t need to. What I bring is valuable on its own.

And more importantly:

Who I am is not tied to the value I deliver.

I am Ja’Nohn. Full stop.

The beauty of this brain is boundless.

If you’ve made it this far, just know:

We are all finding ourselves—one day, one mistake, one exposed lie at a time.

It’s okay to back up. Reverse. Let it drop.

The job. The identity. The story you told yourself because it felt safe.

None of it was you to begin with.

I am so excited by what I get to build, and I’d love to hear how this made you feel.