Rest Is A Black Feminist Act
Rest isn’t luxury, it’s resistance. For Black women, slowing down can be a radical act of refusal.
I turned off my phone and left the emails unanswered. The day passed without checking anything off a list. It wasn’t burnout, not exactly. I just needed to stop trying to be useful.
Rest didn’t always feel like an option. It still doesn’t, most days. Black women are expected to keep going, whether that’s at work, home, online, or in grief. Even in exhaustion, we’re praised for how well we carry it. But I’ve started to question who benefits from that performance and what it costs us to maintain it.
Our Labor, Their Gain
The expectation that Black women should always be working isn’t new. It’s been polished and repackaged, but it’s never disappeared. From forced plantation labor to domestic work to the corporate climb, we’ve been praised for our strength and endurance, yet rarely for our boundaries or needs.
Hustle culture folded itself into this history and called it empowerment. Somewhere along the way, feminism got marketed as ambition without rest. The “boss b*tch” became a brand of always grinding and being visible, always performing control. However, behind the image is often exhaustion, isolation, and pressure to prove you deserve the seat you already earned. This version of feminism doesn’t free us. It just hands us better tools to survive exploitation.
Rest As Rebellion
To begin, rest isn’t optional. For Black women, it is a necessary break from a system that profits from our labor. I’m not just talking about physical work, but also the emotional care, unpaid responsibilities, and constant availability. Remember that when Black women express frustration, we are labeled as aggressive.
The burden of nonstop performance also has mental health consequences. Black American adults report 30 percent more serious psychological distress than white Americans. Black women carry this invisibly, often materializing in disordered sleep, elevated self-criticism, and disproportionate rates of depressive symptoms that often go unrecognized by clinicians.
So when a Black woman chooses rest, it is a political intervention. Capitalism and patriarchy reward output over wellness. The “strong Black woman” trope encourages silence, self-sacrifice, and even self-medication rather than rest. And rest isn’t a luxury. It’s a refusal to accept a system that expects us to stay exhausted. Slow down, and you reclaim space. Breathe, and you reclaim a right.