Subtraction Is Not Freedom
I forgot my coffee that morning.
Still nursing, still rushing,
Starbucks on the block.
Hijab.
Kufiyah.
A paper cup in my hand.
The talk that day was fierce—
don’t buy, don’t support, don’t sip.
I tried to hide my cup.
It wasn’t about coffee.
It was about survival.
It was about the shame of needing
what the movement told me to refuse.
When you are surviving,
subtraction is not freedom.
It is loneliness.
Survivors know this.
We subtract our words
to avoid danger.
We subtract our joy
to stay small.
We subtract our needs
to keep peace.
Subtraction has always been survival’s demand.
My body carries milk.
My arms carry children.
My spirit carries memory.
And still, I am asked to carry shame
for a cup of coffee.
So when the call comes—
don’t buy, don’t touch, don’t enter—
I hear another voice too:
this is bigger than you, do it in solidarity.
we need collective pressure, the world must change.
I hear that voice.
I believe in solidarity.
But solidarity that asks me to give without holding me—
that asks me to subtract without offering what I will need—
is not solidarity. It is extraction.
What I would ask is this:
do you see me carrying?
do you know what I already give to survive?
how will you hold me while I let go?
what are we building so my leaving does not become my hunger?
Because boycotts can shift power.
But boycotts without care shift cost onto the already-carried.
They name the target and forget the people inside the target.
The cashier.
The shift worker.
The parent with small hands to hold.
The mother who needed a minute of relief.
These places are not innocent.
But they are not empty.
And if I withdrew from everything complicit,
what would remain?
Black people do not own the soil,
the water,
the banks.
To boycott it all
would be to boycott life itself.
Subtraction leaves us hungry.
Subtraction leaves us hollow.
Subtraction leaves us silenced.
So solidarity must look like this:
we refuse together and we build together.
we withhold and we fund.
we walk away and we open a space to land.
we name harm and we make repair.
we call for accountability and we make community care real.
I return to love.
Love as strategy.
Love that builds before it subtracts.
Love that creates abundance
so that walking away
is not starvation
but overflow.
Because survivors deserve to add.
To add joy.
To add care.
To add peace.
Subtraction is not freedom.
Love is.
And if we build love,
if we choose love,
we will not need to force subtraction.
Freedom will rise as overflow.
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With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
All rights reserved © Chriseithia Collins | Black Self Wellth™