The Parts of Building This Practice I Don't Talk About

An honest look at what it really takes to build something as a Black woman, for Black Business Month.

August is Black Business Month and this year I want to mark it by being honest about my own chapter of it. Because you see the practice now, and you do not always see what it costs to build.

You see the website, the caseload, the steady presence online, alhamdulillah. What you did not see was the season it was actually built in. The doubt that showed up at 2am. The days I quietly wondered whether I had any business building anything at all.

Being a therapist does not make you immune to imposter syndrome. If anything, it can make it louder, because you understand exactly what you are doing to yourself and you do it anyway. I could name the pattern and still feel trapped inside it. I could offer other women compassion I struggled to extend to myself. That gap between what we know and what we feel is one of the most human things there is, and building a business puts it under a spotlight.

Nobody talks enough about how lonely building something can be. How rest starts to feel like falling behind. How you can love the work deeply and still grieve the version of you who had more room to breathe. How the people who love you can be proud of you and worried about you in the very same breath, and how both of those things are their own kind of love.

There is a specific weight that comes with being a Black woman building something. The pressure to succeed not just for yourself, but for everyone who came before you and everyone watching to see if it can be done. The feeling that resting is a luxury you have not earned yet. The quiet math of whether you are allowed to take up this much space. These are not small things and they do not disappear just because the business is doing well.

Faith carried me through the parts I could not carry myself. Dua before decisions I was not sure of. Tawakkul when the path forward was unclear. And still fear came along for the ride, because faith and fear are not mutually exclusive. I held both and some days more gracefully than others.

I share this because so many of the women I sit with are building something too. A business, a career, a family, a whole new life. So many of them are quietly wondering if the struggle means they are doing it wrong. While in reality it means you are building something that matters without a map, and that is hard, sacred, ordinary work.

This is also why entrepreneurs find their way into therapy. The imposter syndrome, the money fears, the family expectations, the loneliness of leadership. All of it belongs in the room. Your business deserves a founder who is well resourced, not one running on fumes and telling herself that burnout is the price of ambition.

So to every Black woman building something quietly this month, especially the ones who feel like they are doing it alone: I see you. I am you. Happy Black Business Month.

Ebla Therapy and Consulting  offers virtual therapy for Black women, Muslim women, and immigrant women across Ontario, including the founders and builders carrying more than they let on. If you need a space that is just yours, a free consultation is here.