Women’s History Month Feature
PaSH Magazine is celebrating Women’s History Month with a Q&A style mini-series highlighting women from many different industries making an impact in the world, their communities and for themselves. In this Q&A we will spend time with Nicole Sade.
Meet Nicole Sade
Nicole Sade’ is a Birmingham, Alabama–based author, blogger, and award-winning journalist known for creating candid, relatable content about millennial women. Her writing explores modern relationships, self-discovery, healing, and the pressures that shape how women love and live. Called a voice for her generation, Nicole has meaningful conversations that encourage women to reflect, grow, and define their own love and standards.
She founded the Nicole Sade’ website, a lifestyle platform that inspires young women and has reached thousands of readers, recognized for its engaging content on relationships, personal growth, and daily life.
In January 2017, Nicole turned her blog into her debut book series, No Room for Trust, marking her entry into authorship. The series draws on the experiences of young women in Birmingham and has resonated with teens and young adults. By portraying authentic characters and situations, Nicole explores themes central to youth and young adults: friendship, trust, dating, relationships, and college life.
Since graduating from Miles College, Nicole has written for publications including The Birmingham Times, Reckon South, Forty Magazine, Red Pash Magazine, CampusLately, The Modern Standard, and more.
Nicole is an instructor in the Communications program at Miles College, where she teaches writing and media courses and mentors future storytellers, journalists, and media professionals. Through her work in media, literature, and education, Nicole is committed to creating spaces where women—especially millennial women of color—feel seen, heard, and empowered.
What personal, cultural, or observational experiences inspired you to write this book, and why did it feel urgent to tell this story now?
This book was inspired by years of conversations I’ve had with women that were either friends, readers, and even strangers who were all asking some version of the same question: Why does dating feel so complicated now? As a millennial woman, I’ve watched many of us grow up with one set of expectations about love and marriage, only to step into adulthood and realize that the landscape had completely changed.
We were taught that if we worked on ourselves, built our careers, and showed up as “good women,” relationships would naturally follow a certain path. But the reality has been much more complex. I started noticing patterns in how women talked about dating, healing, and emotional labor. A lot of us were repeating cycles we didn’t fully understand yet.
It felt urgent to write this book because millennial women are in the middle of a major shift. We’re questioning things our mothers and grandmothers didn’t always have the space to question—like why we tolerate certain dynamics in relationships or why we sometimes stay longer than we should. Ladies, How Did We Get Here? is really about unpacking those patterns and creating space for more honest conversations about love.
How do you see relationship standards evolving among modern women, particularly in a climate where independence and emotional fulfillment are both prioritized?
Modern women are redefining what partnership actually looks like. Independence used to be framed as something that competed with relationships, but now many women see it as something that strengthens them. We’re no longer approaching love from a place of survival or necessity the way previous generations sometimes had to.
At the same time, independence has raised the bar emotionally. Women want connection, but they also want emotional safety, communication, and consistency. That combination is shifting how we evaluate relationships. A lot of women are realizing that companionship alone isn’t enough—they want partnership that aligns with the life they’re building.
Many women recognize recurring patterns in their dating lives—what psychological factors do you explore that help explain why these cycles repeat?
One of the biggest themes I explore is how early experiences shape our emotional expectations in relationships. Many of us learned ideas about love long before we ever started dating—through family dynamics, cultural messaging, or even what we saw growing up.
When those early patterns aren’t examined, they can show up in subtle ways. For example, some women may feel drawn to partners who require emotional fixing because that dynamic feels familiar. Others may tolerate inconsistency because they’ve internalized the belief that love requires endurance.
The book explores how those psychological patterns develop and why awareness is the first step in breaking them.
In your view, how have cultural shifts around gender roles, labor, and emotional availability reshaped how women approach love and partnership?
Women today are navigating a very different reality than previous generations. Many of us are educated, financially independent, and building lives that don’t revolve around marriage as the only form of security.
But while women’s roles have evolved, expectations around emotional labor in relationships haven’t always shifted at the same pace. That disconnect has created tension in modern dating. Women are often asking for emotional partnership that reflects the balance they’re already creating in other areas of life.
Because of that, many women are reassessing what they’re willing to accept in relationships.
How does the book challenge traditional ideas of worth that are often tied to relationships, marriage, or male validation?
For a long time, women were conditioned to measure their worth through relationship milestones—being chosen, getting married, or maintaining a partnership at all costs. This book challenges that idea by encouraging women to separate their personal value from their relationship status.
Your worth doesn’t increase because someone chooses you, and it doesn’t decrease because a relationship ends. When women begin to understand that, it shifts how they approach love entirely.
Instead of dating from a place of proving their value, they begin dating from a place of alignment.
What role does accountability play in healing—especially when it comes to unlearning survival behaviors that once felt necessary?
Accountability is a major part of healing because it allows us to recognize the difference between what helped us survive and what helps us thrive.
Many behaviors that show up in relationships can be overextending ourselves, ignoring red flags, or staying in unhealthy dynamics were learned as ways to protect ourselves emotionally. But at some point, those survival strategies can start working against us.
Healing requires the courage to acknowledge those patterns without shame, and then consciously choose healthier ones.
How do identity, culture, and generational conditioning influence the choices women make in relationships, even when they’re doing “everything right”?
Identity and cultural messaging shape our understanding of relationships in ways we don’t always notice at first. Many women grew up hearing certain ideas about loyalty, sacrifice, and what it means to be a “good woman” in a relationship.
Even when a woman is educated, self-aware, and doing the internal work, those deeper messages can still influence her decisions. Sometimes it shows up as feeling pressure to stay longer than she should or feeling responsible for holding a relationship together.
Part of what the book does is encourage women to examine those inherited beliefs and decide which ones still serve them.
Why do you think conversations about boundaries, self-worth, and emotional health in relationships are resonating so deeply with women right now?
Women are becoming more emotionally self-aware, and that awareness naturally leads to deeper conversations about boundaries and self-worth. Therapy, social media, and community spaces have made it easier for women to share experiences and realize they’re not alone in what they’ve been navigating.
When women begin to see patterns reflected in other people’s stories, it creates permission to question their own experiences. That’s why these conversations are resonating so strongly right now because women are recognizing themselves in them.
And once that awareness starts, it often becomes the beginning of real change.
Thank you for reading this installment of the Women’s History Month Features. Come back each day to read a new inspiring story, centering women.
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