Soft Words for Black Girls

Photo by @eyeforebony

When I was in middle school, I had a friend named DeDe, who was painfully shy. DeDe loved to talk to her friends, but would clam up immediately when meeting new people or being in new environments. Today, we have much more nuanced language around social anxiety and introversion, but at the time, shy was the word her friends and her family used to guard her in loud spaces.