Black Girl Burnout

Continuing the How to Soften Without Falling Apart series, this episode focuses on the boundaries required to protect your humanity in overwhelming times. Kelley explores why Black women are often conditioned to absorb pain, urgency, and responsibility—and how that leads to exhaustion and burnout. Through nervous-system-informed tools and practical language, she offers a new way forward: learning to respond without absorbing, care ...

In this episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley names what many of us are living through: the world is still loud, uncertain, and heavy—and there is no clean “after” yet. Instead of focusing on who we’ll become once things settle, this conversation centers on who we are while things are still on fire. Kelley explores how survival mode can quietly become an identity, what we lose when that happens, and why softness isn’t a luxury rese...

In this episode, Kelley explores why softness is not collapse or avoidance—but a survival strategy in hard times. As the world feels increasingly heavy, she reframes softness as discernment, protection, and a way to stay human without disappearing. Through personal reflection and practical examples, Kelley invites listeners to release constant bracing and reconnect with their bodies, boundaries, and choices. This episode is a remin...

In this episode, Kelley reframes burnout as a response to systems that demand too much—not a personal failure or character flaw. She explores why we internalize stress, how self-betrayal becomes normalized, and what it looks like to support yourself without overriding your body’s needs. You’ll learn how to build support, rhythm, and minimal mindfulness practices that help you stay human in a world that keeps asking for more.

Key...

In this tools-forward conversation, Kelley sits down with business strategist Jessica Lackey, author of Leaving the Casino, to unpack why so many of us have been taught to gamble with our time, energy, and money in the name of success.

This episode challenges the myth that virality, hustle, or six-figure milestones are the key to freedom. Instead, it offers a grounded, nervous-system-safe framework for building careers, businesses, ...

If the year didn’t start gently — if January arrived with tension, grief, or exhaustion instead of clarity — this episode is for you. Kelley offers a softer, more honest way to begin the year: not by conquering it or hardening yourself, but by holding it with both hands. Through a nervous-system-informed lens, she explores why overwhelm and numbness make sense right now, how joy supports regulation rather than avoidance, and how Bl...

Five years into Black Girl Burnout, this season premiere serves as a manifesto and recommitment to living fully without self-abandonment. Kelley reframes burnout as more than a work issue, challenges the lie that success requires suffering, and invites listeners to build lives rooted in softness, ambition, and sustainability—without disappearing, shrinking, or betraying themselves.

Key Takeaways

• You can be ambitious with...

In this manifesto-style year-end episode, Kelley closes out 2025 by naming the new foundation of Black Girl Burnout: five gentle “commandments” designed to help Black women opt out of struggle and choose softness, joy, and liberation. Reflecting on a year of global change, personal evolution, and collective exhaustion, she reframes rest, ease, joy, softness, and freedom from unnecessary pain as non-negotiable truths—not rewards. Th...

In this episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley revisits the idea of the Soft Lock-In as a gentler alternative to end-of-year hustle culture. Designed for moments of deep exhaustion and burnout, this conversation offers a compassionate December reset rooted in nervous system safety, realistic expectations, and care-first productivity.

Key Takeaways

• You don’t need to “finish the year strong” — you need a reset that supports...

In this episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley explores how empowerment has quietly shifted into performance — and why that shift is especially exhausting and harmful for Black women. She unpacks the cultural, economic, and patriarchal pressures driving hustle culture, aesthetic wellness, and performance-based worth, while offering a softer, more liberatory way forward as the year comes to a close.

Key Takeaways

• Empowerme...

In this episode, Kelley names what’s really behind the collective exhaustion so many Black women are feeling: layer after layer of crisis, an overworked nervous system, and the cultural push to lock in when we barely have anything left to give. Drawing from her lived experience and burnout expertise, she breaks down the three layers of the Great Crash Out of 2025 and offers a liberatory alternative: finishing the year softly. Inste...

In this deeply grounding conversation, Kelley and author Tara Pringle Jefferson explore what it takes to stop “doing it all yourself” and allow support, softness, and ease into your life. Together, they unpack how burnout, community, and generational healing intertwine—and what it means to give yourself permission to bloom exactly as you are.

Key Takeaways

• Letting yourself be supported is not weakness—it’s relief and ren...

In this episode, Kelley offers a gentle invitation to rethink gratitude and generosity in ways that honor your real capacity. Instead of pushing through exhaustion or defaulting to obligation, she explores how rest, presence, and honest boundaries can create more meaningful connection. This is a grounding reminder to slow down, soften, and practice generosity that does not require self-erasure.

Key Takeaways

• Gratitude do...

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

In this deeply personal episode of Black Girl Burnout, host Kelley opens up about the exhaustion that comes with trying to hold everything together—career, caregiving, friendships, and self-care. She examines why so many high-achieving Black women feel pressured to “keep all the balls in the air,” and what it means to pause, realign, and choose peace over perfection. Kelley invites listeners to question the story behind their const...

In this episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley invites you to rethink what discipline can feel like. Instead of viewing structure as a restriction, she shares how to make discipline delicious by weaving in joy and pleasure through a practice called dopamine anchoring. This gentle, neuroscience-backed approach helps you stay consistent without relying on willpower or burnout cycles—proving that pleasure isn’t a distraction from your ...

In this reflective solo episode, host Kelley explores what it means to “do your best” when your best no longer looks the same. Drawing from her experience with grief, aging, and shifting capacity, Kelley redefines productivity and success through softness and self-compassion. She invites listeners to release perfectionism, honor their limits, and embrace a gentler approach to achievement.

This episode is a tender reminder that your ...

In this powerful episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley invites us to radically rethink how we approach productivity. For generations, Black women have been conditioned to believe that joy must be earned—that rest comes only after the grind. But what if that belief is not only outdated, but harmful?

Through personal stories, science-backed insights, and cultural truth-telling, Kelley introduces us to dopamine anchoring, a technique t...

In this episode of the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelley shares an honest check-in she calls The Getting My Life Together Toolkit. Instead of another rigid routine or “glow-up” plan, she offers the small, sustaining habits and mindset shifts that are actually helping her through life’s “life-ing.” From soft structure and nervous system routines to practical self-care rituals, Kelley invites you to build your own toolkit—one rooted...