Unseen: Trauma Wounds We Can Face as Black Creatives
January 15th, 2026
I don’t need to say who this is for – if the cover alone didn’t give you enough clarity, then I honestly don’t know what to tell you.
I wanted to bring this up because it’s something we’re aware of, something we talk about, but we don’t actually feel all the way through. The literal and figurative feeling of being unseen—especially as someone who creates things that are meaningful to you, and that you want to mean something to someone else one day. You put something out – something real – but nothing comes back. Nothing that registers in your brain that says, “It’s safe for you to be yourself and make something great.” Call it intrusive thoughts, call it anxiety – but to me, it’s trauma inducing. That low feeling you get when your work isn’t acknowledged, when you put in three times the work just to be even seen- and it still doesn’t land – that does something to you.
Then you add real life on top of that.
Having to work. Having to show up somewhere every day, following instructions, move on someone else’s time. Being told what to do constantly, while the things you actually care about, sit on the back burner. That does something to you. Especially when you know you have something in you, but you don’t have the space to fully pour into it. It puts you in a place emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually, that you didn’t realize could go that deep. Because that silence is never surface level. Sometimes being unseen, doesn’t feel like being overlooked – it feels like being erased. That feeling is tied to something heavier. Something that didn’t start with you, but before you. It’s ancestral.
There was a time where we weren’t even considered human. Constantly othered, ostracized, attacked. Our efforts, even our money, reduced to nothing by people who believed we deserved less than what we were asking. And what we were asking for wasn’t outrageous.It was decency, peace, and space.
But ignorance doesn’t think in those terms.
That’s 400+ years of being made to feel small. And that weight doesn’t just disappear – it gets carried. And even now in a time where information moves fast and influence moves faster, that feeling doesn’t shrink – it can actually grow. We’ve all seen it.
Creators having their work stolen bar for bar, style for style, by people who assume nobody will notice. Smaller creators especially get hit the hardest – big ideas, small platforms, and people move like that means free game. “Who’s gonna know? They’re not even popular.”
And if I’m being real—fuck that.
Because this isn’t just happening to smaller creators. It never has been. This same feeling of invisibility has followed some of the biggest names across every space.
It took weeks for people to realize the original creator of the “Dangerous” line dance was actually a Black girl (TikTok: Tyanna2020). Meanwhile, the Internet ran with it, amplified it, and before you know it, someone else is on stage getting paid for something they didn’t even create. (Editors note: It was giving Elvis and I’m not debating that with anybody either.)
And then you have moments like with Michael B. Jordan – someone who has consistently shown up, put in the work, built a solid career– being called a derogatory slur on live television while promoting a film he poured himself into. People can brush that off, minimize it, and say it’s not that deep. But it is. Because what people don’t see is accumulation. The years of proving yourself. The constant pressure to show up at a level that leaves no room for error, just to be respected at a baseline. They have NO idea what it took to build yourself up brick by brick.
So when he won his first Oscar, that moment wasn’t just a win, That shit was personal. At some point recognition stops being about celebration and starts feeling like a relief. Like finally, something outside of you validated what you’ve known about yourself the entire time. And nobody can fully imagine his exact thoughts or emotions throughout his personal journey —every black person can understand the weight of it. We’ve felt pieces of it. That same weight shows up when you’re creating, when you’re sharing, when you’re waiting for something to land and it doesn’t it. It’s not just disappointment. It’s layered, historical and psychological.
And that’s the part people don’t sit with long enough…
