We Can’t Ever Have Nuttin’.
And yet. Here we are. Still building anyway.
(Editors Note: This piece was originally published as our final Substack send and the announcement that Holistree was coming home. It lives here now, where it always should have.)
….You find a platform that feels like it could be yours.
You build there. You pour there. You invite your people there. You create something intimate and honest and alive - a corner of the internet where your words don’t have to compete with noise, don’t have to beg an algorithm, don’t have to shrink themselves to fit someone else’s agenda.
And then.
The platform shifts. The ownership reveals itself. The values you thought you shared turn out to be a lease you were never meant to hold long-term.
And Black women, as we always do, are left standing at the door of something we helped make meaningful, asking ourselves, again: Why do we keep building on land that was never really ours?
This isn’t just about Substack.
This is about a pattern we know in our bones.
The neighborhood that gets “discovered.” The cultural moment that gets commodified. The movement that gets co-opted. The safe space that gets infiltrated. The platform we pour ourselves into until it decides we are optional or until it decides that hosting the voices that dehumanize us is just the cost of “free expression.”
We have watched Substack make choices that put profit above protection. Choices that allowed hate to live comfortably alongside community. Choices that reminded us, gently at first and then unmistakably, that we were guests - not owners.
And for Black women who write, who create, who pour wisdom into the world with every word, that landing is not abstract. It’s personal. It’s exhausting. And it’s enough.
We don’t need another reminder that our presence is welcomed until it’s inconvenient. We need infrastructure that belongs to us. We need to stop paying rent on the house we built.
The Well Resourced Black Woman doesn’t beg for permanence.
At Holistree, we talk about what it means to be a Well Resourced Black Woman. Not a woman who has everything figured out. Not a woman who is immune to disappointment or exhaustion or the very real weight of navigating systems that were not designed for her.
A Well Resourced Black Woman is one who is designed to hold herself, her work, her community because she has built the conditions and the capacity to do so. She is not endlessly adapting to what the platform demands. She is designing the platform that answers to her.
That is the work we’ve been doing at Holistree for ten years.
Ten years of building a Sweet Life framework rooted not in aspiration but in architecture. Ten years of saying: the life you deserve is not something you earn or wait for. It is something you design with intention, with resources, and with full ownership of the ground you stand on.
This moment is not a disruption of that vision. It is proof of why that vision matters.
Where we stand. What we believe.
Holistree exists because Black women deserve more than a seat at someone else’s table. They deserve a table designed to hold them and everything they carry.
Our mission is to help well-resourced Black women design lives of joy, capacity, and sustainability - lives that integrate wellness, identity, wealth, and legacy into something whole. Our vision is a world where the women who have been holding everything finally have the infrastructure, the community, and the inner fullness to be held themselves.
We don’t compromise that mission for convenience. And we don’t outsource it to a platform that can change the rules mid-game.
So here’s what we’re doing.
Turning Sour Into Sweet - our Substack - is coming home.
Every article, every essay, every piece of writing we’ve published will now live where it always should have lived: on our own house, on our own website.
All new writing - the Architecture essays, the Wednesday Wellness, the Friday Celebration, all of it publishes there first, there always.
And if you’ve been a Substack subscriber? You’re not losing anything. We’re bringing you with us. When the migration is complete, we’ll move you over and you’ll hear from us there, in your inbox, on our terms, on a platform that belongs to Holistree and to this community.
I want to be very clear about one thing: we respect your inbox. I respect your time. We will not flood you. We will not spam you. What you’ve come to expect from us: intentional, nourishing, meaningful is what you’ll continue to receive. That’s a promise.
We are still here. We are still growing.
This year, Holistree turns ten.
A decade of doing this work. A decade of building something that holds Black women with the fullness they deserve. A decade of refining the Sweet Life framework, deepening the Sweet Life Society, creating spaces for Black Women.
Ten years in, and we are not slowing down. We are not shrinking. We are not abandoning the work because the ground shifted under a platform we were renting.
We are coming home. And we are inviting you to follow us there.
We can’t ever have nuttin’ - until we decide to own it.
We’re deciding now.
With love and full ownership,
Rakita, your Sweet Life Maven
If this landed for you, if you felt something reading it - you're already one of us. Holistree has been building a home for Well Resourced Black Women for ten years. A place where rest is a practice, joy is the point, and your life is something you design on purpose. This website is that home now. Subscribe below and we'll deliver every new piece directly to your inbox. No noise. No spam. Just the good stuff - exactly when it's ready.
