Real talk. Real life. No apologies.
I’m Shirl — writer, strategist, and a Black woman who says what she means.
I'm Shirl.
I’ve spent 30 years in boardrooms and community spaces watching people dance around the truth. Say It Lady is what happens when I stop doing that.
New here? Start with these three.
Three essays that tell you exactly what this place is.
Latest
“The Man,” The Trap, and Why I Can’t Find a Good Black Husband
The government’s fingerprints on a dating pool that shrank on purpose, from crack in the eighties to a welfare rule that punished a man for staying.
Walter Is Getting Older and I’m Not Ready
A six-year-old French Bulldog, the math on his lifespan, and everything he’s carried me through that I never carried for him first.
Reading the Room. The Skill That Changes Everything.
Fifteen seconds when you walk into a room to establish yourself and read what is already there. Black women are the best room readers on earth. The skill works in boardrooms and bedrooms and everywhere in between. The question is whether we trust what we read.