Water your own garden.
Till your own soil.

I once stopped a pair of moms — grown women — from talking shit about a teenage girl. Then, about a week later, I had to reel in one of those same moms — this time from talking shit about another mom.

Really?

Now, I'm far from perfect, so I would never claim to be the "right police" at all. But I notice this far too often, and I don't like it. Remember when grown women were out here debating Blue Ivy's natural hair? That was so wild to me.

Story Time

This hit close to home for me once. I was in a women's entrepreneur group — a space I thought was supposed to feel safe, honest, and rooted in real life.

Well, the honesty in the room was a little shady that day.

I walk in, and the conversation is centered on Rihanna's hair, right around the time she'd just launched Fenty Hair. What got me was how fast the conversation shifted from curiosity into criticism. The girls were not feeling the natural curls.

I clocked the scene and immediately checked out. Because… why is this the topic?

Rihanna had just had a baby, was building a brand, and still somehow became the subject of unnecessary judgment. That part stuck with me, because being a woman is already a tender, complicated thing. The body changes. The hormones shift. The size of your clothes can flip from one week to the next. The version of yourself you show the world can look different day to day. Postpartum is real, and I felt all the empathy in that moment.

Apparently my face had subtitles as I was processing the moment, because one of the women turned and asked what I thought about Rihanna's hair.

I didn't have anything else to contribute to the conversation.

Miss Me with the Mess

Since I'm being honest here, I'm too busy figuring out my own life to fixate on someone else's. Celebrity worship has always struck me as strange, honestly. They're human. Flawed. They poop and bleed just like the rest of us.

There's a whole culture now — thanks to social media and the kind of access we all have into each other's lives — where people think they can say anything. Comment on someone's body. Judge their choices. Their appearance. Their parenting. All because that person happens to be in the public eye.

But here's the thing: we're all visible now. Everything and everyone is up for public consumption and scrutiny.

So maybe the standard shouldn't be "do I agree with their choices." Maybe the standard is knowing what works for my own life instead of staying consumed with how everybody else is living theirs. That, plus a little mindfulness. Gentleness. The same grace we'd want extended to us.

I'm not above any of this, by the way. The times I did make an unwarranted comment about someone, it was because I was sitting with an insecurity of my own — projecting outward what I hadn't dealt with inward. And yes, I've had my fair share of pretty and petty ASF moments. But these days, I can find a hundred other things to do before I get to the gossip.

Now on another note, I'm an advocate for speaking up and out. For injustice. For wrongdoing. For humankind. We have the power to create anything we want — so why would we spend that power creating bad energy toward other people?

And I won't pretend that's the whole story either. There are people in this world who don't extend that grace at all, who don't see certain people, certain races, as fully human to begin with. That's a different, deeper wound than gossip, and I don't want to flatten it into the same conversation. But it's also not lost on me. The two things exist on the same spectrum of dehumanizing somebody because it's easier than seeing them.

Till Your Own Soil

In good faith, I refuse to be the person who adds more pessimism to the room. Rather than audibly discussing my dislike for a choice someone else has made for themselves, I use the external experience — what's happening with or to the other person — to gain clarity about my personal and internal experience.

I don't judge. I observe, with kind curiosity, pulling out the cliff notes and applying the lessons.

I've learned that negative thinking creates blockages. And because our thoughts are so powerful, we have to sow them wisely. Productively. It's no different than planting a seed in soil. Bad seed, nothing good to harvest. Good seed, good fruit. Food. Nourishment.

When you think of it that way, we're all capable of growing and expanding in ways we could never imagine — when goodness is what we're planting.

Plus, people grow better together than we do when we are picking each other apart. I just want to till the soil in my own garden and use my energy to water what's good.

Let's make being a good human — and being good to humans — the trend.