Whitnie Goins, 31, heard God tell her to sit still after facing a devastating breakup with her then-boyfriend in 2018. It wasn’t her first heartbreak, but it hit differently than the others.
“Throughout my life I’ve always run toward something else after a relationship ended,” she told me via Zoom from her beautiful high-rise LA apartment. A few months ago she lived in Chicago, where she’d been just shy of a decade. Before that, a promotion temporarily took her to Minneapolis. Prior to that, she was in Indianapolis for college, a place she’d also been itching to leave after some dalliances there had ended, not to mention her professional pursuits beckoned her to bigger cities. “I have the habit of leaving town after splitting with a dude, not going to lie,” she shared laughingly.
Whitnie doesn’t just relocate post-heartache—she acknowledged during our conversation that she’d developed a habit of picking up something else while healing from relationship woes: professional achievements. She has a degree in business from Butler University and a litany of certifications including a DEI certificate from the prestigious Cornell University. That wasn’t enough though.
“After that last break up, I began looking into graduate schools in other states and started studying for the GMAT to escape the hurt and anger I felt, but that little voice told me to stay put and learn this life lesson.”
Whitnie’s not alone.
Black women have joked on social media about going back to school or pursuing a better job after a breakup to inadvertently make those who hurt them eat their hearts out.
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This is what I call a “spite degree” (a term I’d like to believe I coined since I haven’t seen it anywhere else on the web) or the “revenge glow-up,” as it’s been colloquially-dubbed. These are…
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