Burnout Ain’t My Birthright: Softness, Survival & The Art of Letting Go

Let’s get one thing clear—Black women are not made to suffer. I don’t care what this world has tried to convince us, how many times we’ve been told to “push through,” or how often we’ve had to carry the weight of entire legacies on our backs. We are not here to be everybody’s rock, mule, or sacrificial lamb. We are soft things too.

And yet, burnout be creeping up on us like an overdue bill. It shows up in the exhaustion behind our eyes, the tightness in our shoulders, the shortness in our patience. It’s in the moments when we snap at our babies for just being kids, when we pour from a cup that’s been empty for weeks, when we wake up already counting the hours until we can sleep again. It’s the cycle of always showing up for everybody but ourselves. And listen, I love us, but enough is enough.

From Queens to Columbia: My Life in the In-Between

I know burnout personally—intimately, even. It’s been an unwelcome guest at my table for years. See, I’ve spent my life making impossible things look easy. I was raised in South Jamaica, Queens, by my great-grandmother, Grandma Babe, while navigating the complexities of a mother with a mental wellness disability and a father locked behind bars for two decades.

I have been manifesting softness for my entire life. I am the first in my bloodline to pursue a PhD, and participate in a program and discipline that does not take too kindly to women and especially women like me. I do this while raising my beautiful daughter as a single mother, working full-time as an educator, and holding space for my community. My days start before the sun and end long after my body has begged me to rest. I am the living, breathing manifestation of my ancestors’ wildest dreams—but even dreams get tired. Even dreams need rest. I hear my Grandma Babe tellling me, "Pelly, sit down."

And I know I’m not alone in this. So many of us are walking miracles, but what does it mean to be a miracle that is also constantly exhausted? How do we reclaim our time, our joy, and our right to be whole?

Burnout, Black Feminism, and The Politics of Rest

My work as a scholar is not separate from my lived experience—it is braided into it. The foundation of my research lies in Black feminist epistemology, embodied knowledge, and the ways Black women construct meaning from survival. Audre Lorde told us that caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. Tricia Hersey reminds us that rest is resistance. bell hooks taught us that love is an act of will—and that includes love for ourselves. My scholarship interrogates these truths, pushes them further, and applies them to the unspoken yet deeply felt expectations placed upon Black women in academic, professional, and social spaces.

We have always been tasked with knowing, doing, and being more. But what if we chose, instead, to exist in the fullness of our humanity, without justification? What if we rejected the urgency culture that tells us our worth is tied to our productivity? What if we embraced rest as not just necessary, but as sacred? Because the truth is, a world that does not honor our rest will never fully honor our existence.

So, today, I am choosing rest. I am choosing softness. I am choosing a version of success that doesn’t leave me depleted. And if you’re reading this, I hope you choose the same.

💖 Because burnout is not our birthright, but joy? That belongs to us. 💖