This episode invites you to look honestly at the weight you’ve been carrying—family roles, cultural conditioning, religious expectations, emotional labor—and notice where care has turned into collapse. Kelley unpacks why so many Black women feel stretched thin and offers a grounded path back to caring in a way that honors your capacity, preserves your joy, and keeps you connected without abandoning yourself.
Key Takeaways
- Caring becomes harmful when it requires self-erasure, chronic overgiving, or inherited roles that leave you invisible.
- Cultural, familial, and religious conditioning often normalize collapse, and unlearning these scripts is essential.
- You can care deeply while protecting your energy through pausing, honest capacity checks, and letting grown people be grown.
- Caring without collapsing brings lightness, reciprocity, steadiness, and the return of your joy.
Episode Highlights & Timestamps
- Naming collapse and its signs — The internal breaking point so many Black women hide behind resilience. [00:02:03–00:03:00]
- How collapse shows up: resentment, exhaustion, invisibility[00:09:00–00:09:15]
- Tools for boundaries and presence — Capacity checks, time parameters, and redirection without abandoning yourself. [00:18:11–00:20:29]
- What caring without collapsing feels like — Lightness, reciprocity, safety, and joy’s return [00:21:00–00:22:00]
Gentle Call to Action
Take one small step today: choose one place where you’ve been giving from depletion and practice a pause before responding. Let your body tell you the truth about your capacity.
If this episode brought clarity, share it with someone who is carrying too much. Let them know there’s another way—care can coexist with ease.
Support the Show
Are you experimenting with new ways to rest? Whether it’s saying no to one more obligation, shutting your laptop at 5 p.m., or taking a slow walk with no agenda, capture that moment of ease. Share it with us:
@blackgirlburnout
Subscribe to our newsletter: blackgirlburnout.com
Watch the episode on YouTube
Drop a review—help us spread the word that rest is not weakness.
Stay in Touch
Join our Substack family for weekly reflections, tools, and behind-the-scenes notes from Kelley.
Become a paid Substack subscriber ($8/month—the cost of a latte!) for exclusive resources to support your burnout-free life.
Our Sponsors
Check out Green Chef: https://greenchef.com/50BGB
Check out Pharmanutra: pharmanutra-us.com
Savvy Ladies: https://www.savvyladies.org/
Advertising Inquiries: RedCircle
Privacy & Opt-Out: RedCircle
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Green Chef: https://greenchef.com/50BGB
* Check out PharmaNutra and use my code BGB for a great deal: https://pharmanutra-us.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com