I found myself asking myself this question after my old business partner continued what has started to become an annual attempt to re-establish a connection with me.
Last year it was a long sappy email about learning her lesson and being sorry and hoping that we could reconcile.
This year it was a follow on Instagram.
A few years before it was a long letter in the mail, a postcard, and unwanted voice notes on Whatsapp where I forgot to block her.
And the year before that, when I was actually leaving our business, it was a series of attempted financial manipulations because she knew the loss of income was putting me in a precarious financial situation.
I left our shared business, Bask and Being, four years ago. And the second my exit from the business became effective I also ended our "friendship" and told this person to never contact me ever again.
Over the past four years, she has refused to respect my boundaries. Instead, she has ignored them, treated them as if they weren't serious or somehow didn't apply to her, and acted as though the only person who gets to decide whether she is involved in my life is her.
And well, I'm tired.
So this time last week, when I was asking myself the question of what to do when someone so casually violates your boundaries without any remorse, I finally decided that the only answer had to be to stand my ground.
But before I get into how I've decided to do that (including writing this email and make it public), let me give you some background.
My former business partner and I have known of each other since freshman year of college, so 20 years.
We didn't really know each other in college or after it. We had separate friend groups.
But during my acute mental and emotional breakdown in my early 30s, we ended up connecting. Not really because I wanted to, but because I was desperate for help. At the time, I was going through a very big shift in my friendships as I realized many white folks I was friends with were silent in the face of police violence against black people. And when I spoke out about it, there were crickets.
At the same time, I was also having to reckon with a very serious case of CPTSD from being a rape victim and, while it was unknown to me at the time, I was also struggling to mask my then-undiagnosed ADHD.
To put it lightly, things were a mess. I felt extremely isolated and hopeless and one of my few friends that stuck around had to do a wellness check on me every weekend on both weekend days.
It was at this time that my former business partner, Kasey, found her way into my life. She had made previous attempts to connect via Instagram suggesting that we hang out. I had ignored them.
But this time, she reached out via email (not sure why or how she had my email) with an offer for a private yoga session for anxiety and overwhelm. I remember reading it, breathing a huge sigh of relief, and immediately responding YES.
We did the session and she immediately offered me a free coaching package. She said she had just finished her certification and a Yoga Psychology training program and needed people to test it out.
At the time, this seemed like the sign I had been waiting for -- a perfect bridge to receive some support while I looked for a therapist to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me.
Time passed. I found a therapist. Our coaching sessions ended. And I became semi-functional, though I was still far from okay.
But Kasey just stayed. I didn't think anything of it then, but now with the benefit of hindsight and later confessions by her, it makes sense.
Life went on. She became what I thought was my friend. And we eventually decided to go into business together.
This all happened in late 2017. By the end of 2018, we decided to go into business together. In the Spring of 2019, I was quitting my job to do the business full-time.
And by the end of 2019, she was doing this peculiar thing where she kept referring to me as "hers."
Like in conversations with other people (often my other friends) she would say things like "Bri is mine" or "Whatever happens, I won't lose Bri because she's mine."
At first, I didn't think anything of it. But then sometime right before the pandemic shut down, she confessed to me (drunkenly) that she had wanted to be friends with me since our freshman year of college.
She told me that she felt like I thought she was a loser and always looking down on her in college. I remember the confession feeling extremely odd at the time and trying to laugh it off by telling her I didn't think of her in college at all really.
In 2020, we started butting heads in our business. She was a capitalist and had no problem creating co-dependent relationships with clients where we continuously upsold them new services and I wanted to get clear about equipping clients with the tools they needed to be self-sufficient.
In addition, our friendship suffered. In the fall of 2019 she had already been pushing her way into every aspect of my life. But in 2020, she leaned heavily into the role of the victim. About everything. Every time someone held her accountable, she cried. Former coaching clients who ended their packages because they found her unprofessional were the ones in the wrong, not her.
After George Floyd's murder, she peppered me with questions under the guise of "understanding," which only compounded the racial trauma I was trying to work through.
At the time, I was also starting to build community far away from her (I had relocated back to Maryland) and I couldn't help but feel like she believed that the only community I ever needed was her.
The claims that "Bri is mine" increased. She said it repeatedly on our calls in this women's entrepreneurship circle we were in. It felt like she was constantly claiming me as her property and asserting that she owned me.
This is the point where I started to feel deeply unsafe. My nervous system was fried and just being on the phone with her or having to email her for work sent me into a spiral. I did my best to start distancing myself from her. I started picking up gigs on the side to prepare to leave.
Somehow, I found myself agreeing to work with a business coach, which ended up being like couples therapy for business owners. And in our last session with that coach, she declared herself a staunch capitalist and she said she could lose the business, but she wasn't willing to lose me.
And my body said "No." Loudly. One day later on September 2, 2020, I told her I wanted out. It took me 3 months to exit the business and when I did, I also ended our "friendship" and asked her to never contact me or speak to me again.
I blocked all of her numbers, emails, socials -- anything I could think of. And then I tried to understand, unpack, and recover from accidentally finding myself in a relationship with a white person who truly felt like they owned me. Because somehow this white woman had come to think of me as her possession and all of our "issues" seemed to stem from me acting as though I was my own person instead of her property like I was supposed to.
From the outside looking in, there was an air of mystery as to why I left without taking any of the company's assets with me. I just disappeared into the night and hoped no one would ask too many questions. And I especially hoped that Kasey would finally leave me alone.
But as you know by now, she didn't.
She has continued to try to re-establish a connection with me to this day, over 4 years later.
So last week I found myself asking myself that question: what do you do when someone repeatedly violates your boundaries?
What do you do when it feels like someone is stalking you and watching your every move without your permission?
What do you do when you realize that they've probably been doing this for close to 20 years of your life, but you've only been aware of it for 4 of them?
There's no legal recourse in these situations. She doesn't do enough to warrant a restraining order. She does just enough to remind me that she's watching and to remind me that no matter what I say to her, she'll always disregard my feelings and continue to act as though she is entitled to access to me.
I've spent 4 years downplaying the seriousness of this issue. I've tried to tell myself that maybe I'm overreacting or that maybe this year she'll finally leave me alone.
But this year, I've decided to stop gaslighting myself. There's no such thing as overreacting when you are simply listening to what your body is telling you. And my body has been telling me that this person makes me feel deeply unsafe for years now.
Each time she takes the time to figure out where I missed a block via email, or socials, or some other app is an intentional decision to disregard my personal sovereignty and autonomy in favor of what she wants.
And once I accepted that truth, things came through that I hadn't allowed myself to feel for 4 years: anger, fear, grief, and more anger.
As I allowed myself to move through each of those feelings, the answer to my question became crystal clear: I need to go on the offensive.
Not for her, but for me. To remind myself as a black woman, that I am entitled to my own sovereignty and autonomy, that I am allowed to feel unsafe and proclaim how I feel, and that it's never okay for someone to violate your explicit boundaries, even if they only do it once a year.
So I sent this email:
And now I'm writing you this email as a matter of recordkeeping. If she keeps harassing me, I plan to share it publicly. On Linkedin, on social media, etc. I have a friend who works in the press, and I'm sure she'd be happy to help me try to place the story.
But either way, I'm no longer willing to suffer in silence or keep this issue quiet. It's been 4 years and I'm tired. If I need to publicly humiliate this person to get them to stop, then that's what I'll do.
So thank you for reading and witnessing as I hopefully put this issue to bed once and for all.
May you choose love over fear and safety over comfort,
Brionna
