Black Women Don’t Experience Burnout

Not everything can be fixed with deep breathing and PTO.

Does anyone else cringe when they hear the word burnout?
Because I do. Every single time.

Whenever I see a training or resource about burnout, it feels like being offered shoes that don’t fit.
Like someone handing me something they think I need, but I already know I’m not going to use it.
It’s not built for me.
It’s not naming what I carry.

Burnout training feels like plastic.
It sounds helpful, but it doesn’t hold weight.
It skips over the lived reality of what Black women are holding, what we’ve always held.

Let’s be clear. Black women are exhausted.
Stressed out.
Overworked.
Underpaid.
Checked when we speak up.
Ignored when we stay quiet.

But what they call burnout in workplace settings rarely names the truth.
I’m tired because I’ve been running on a treadmill chasing a carrot I was never meant to catch.

And the powers that be?
They know this.
They dangle that promotion, that raise, that opportunity
knowing they passed me over three times already.
Knowing the ceiling above me is made of glass and policy.
But still, they cheer me on.
“Just one more mile.”

Yeah—I’m exhausted.
And we haven’t even started talking about the actual workplace.

Burnout in most work environments never names racialized trauma as a contributing factor.
But for Black women, it’s not just the demands of the job.
It’s the constant emotional labor of navigating white spaces that were never designed for us to thrive.
It’s being twice as prepared and still not protected.
It’s learning again that another Black child has been murdered by police
and still being expected to show up to work the next day
with a smile, a full face, and a readiness to “be professional.”

Then, sitting in a room while someone named Sally offers a six-step plan to prevent burnout.
As if the violence we’re navigating is just a scheduling issue.
It’s a lot.

Burnout without naming racialized trauma is not just incomplete
It’s a form of violence.
Because it erases what is real.
It erases us.

When you ignore the systems that exhaust us. When you ask us to keep performing wellness inside of harm.
You are not helping.
You are compounding the harm.

Let’s name it plain.
Our exhaustion is not just from doing too much.
It’s from surviving too much.

Let Me Tell You a Story

LaQuita “Quita” Shantel Cole was a 40-year-old chef, entrepreneur, and community anchor in Nashville, Tennessee.
She founded QC Kitchen—a soul food restaurant known not just for its flavor, but for its warmth and presence. She was more than a business owner. She was nourishment in human form.

She was also known for her hustle.
She ran her business seven days a week.
She rarely paused. Rarely rested.

In the weeks before her passing, Quita posted to social media:
“Quita needs rest.”

It was not a throwaway line.
It was a boundary. A truth. A whisper too many of us know.

Shortly after she named that exhaustion, Quita passed away unexpectedly.

She didn’t die because she was lazy or undisciplined.
She died because systems of oppression live in our bodies.
Because we are told that our worth is tied to how much we produce.
Because we’ve been taught that excellence will save us.

But as one commentator put it:
“Hustle culture was not built for us. It was built to drain us.”

Another post simply said:
“She was known for hustle and hard work.”

And that’s exactly the problem.
We keep honoring Black women only when we’re working ourselves to death.

Quita told the truth.
She needed rest.
And we didn’t make room for that.

To her family, her community, and those who loved her, my deepest condolences.
We honor her life. We grieve her loss.
And we refuse to let her story be flattened into hustle.

Let this be the interruption.
Let us remember her not just as a hard worker but as a woman who deserved to be cared for, to be held, to be here.

Burnout is not the full story.
Racialized capitalism is.
Systemic violence is.
The idea that rest must be earned—that’s the lie.

She didn’t fail. The system did.
And it’s still extracting from Black women every day.

May we not wait for the body to collapse before we listen.
May we build lives that no longer ask us to die for our dreams.
May we choose rest not because we’re weak, but because we remember
we are sacred
and we are done being sacrificed.

Even though Quita passed away last month, her story is just now beginning to circulate.
The timing is heavy.

Because just hours before I learned about her passing, I stood at a multigenerational conference full of Black women and girls.
And I told them:

God is calling Black women to rest.
To unlearn strength.
To release our legacy of exhaustion.
To remember we are not here to survive
we are here to live.

Some women cried.
Others nodded.
There was a stillness in the room.
A knowing.

Later that night, I received a text from one of the women who was there.
She said:

“We need you, sis. Keep telling Black women to rest.”

And I will.
Because we do.
All of us.

Why Burnout Feels So White

• It pathologizes individuals instead of interrogating toxic systems.
  Burnout tells us that we’re broken when in truth, the system is the sickness.

• It comes from capitalist, white institutional psychology, not community wisdom.
  This term wasn’t born in sacred circles. It didn’t rise from our grandmothers’ prayers.
  It came from boardrooms, labs, and clinics not meant for us.

• It lacks language for rest as repair, ancestral depletion, or embodied trauma.
  Burnout has no space for what lives in us. It cannot name what we carry or what we’ve inherited.

• It centers productivity loss, not well-being, wholeness, or liberation.
  The urgency around burnout only arrives when someone stops being useful to capitalism.
  But what about the soul? What about the body? What about you?

And if I’m honest, when I hear white people, especially white women, trying to teach me about burnout, something in my body shuts down.
I dissociate.
I disappear.
I want to be anywhere but in that room.

Because the truth is—some of the very exhaustion I carry has been caused by white women.
By their unchecked power.
By their performative allyship.
By their inability to see me, hold me, or include me in rooms they claim are “safe.”

So no, they don’t get to teach me about burnout.
They don’t get to lead me back to rest when your voice is part of what made me tired in the first place.

What I need isn’t your six-step burnout recovery plan

What I need is a way to remember myself.
A soft place to land.
A room where I don’t have to code switch.
Where I don’t have to translate my tiredness into corporate language.

A place where rest is not something I earn
but something I return to.

In the community.
In wholeness.
In truth.

May this be that place.

Wisdom Drop

I was tired before I ever got a chance to rest.
Now I choose softness, not survival.
I rest because they couldn’t. I rest because I can.

Gentle Inquiry

• Where did your tired begin?

• Who benefits from your exhaustion?

• What would it look like to rest without guilt, without proving, without fear?

Before You Go—Take Care of Yourself

This was a heavy one.
So don’t just read and keep scrolling.
Pause. Breathe. Return to your body.

We carry so much—some of it ours, some of it inherited.
Let this be your invitation to not carry it all today.

Somatic Cue

Find stillness.
Place one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly.
Close your eyes if it feels safe.
Take a slow, steady breath.

Whisper to yourself:
I am allowed to rest. I am allowed to feel joy.
My worthiness is not connected to my productivity. I will rest.

Notice what softens.
Even if just for a moment.

Let yourself lean into something tender today.
A nap. A laugh. A playlist. A prayer.
More of what makes you feel alive.

You deserve that.
We all do.

This work is sustained by the community. If this spoke to your spirit, I welcome your support:🫶🏾 Thank you for honoring this sacred rest work.