you're not burned out. you're being exploited.

Photo by Jessica Felicio on Unsplash

Sis.

We gotta talk. They are playing in our fucking face. Again. Still.

I know we said we were resting. And that’s fine. We deserve that. But listen to me: don’t drink the Koolaid. This is not the time to stop moving.

¹

Yes, take your cape off. Yes, leave them people alone. Yes, focus on keeping yourself well and at peace. But,

Girl, We’ve Got Work To Do.

If your body naturally recoiled when you read the word “work,” I FUCKING GET IT. But you already know this. The relationship between Black women and labor in the United States has been fraught with exploitation, neglect, and resistance the whole ass time.

We are living in a world that thrives on hypernormalization: a system that sows disillusionment and doom, conditioning us to accept injustice as inevitable.

You’re not burned out, Sis. You’re being exploited and gaslit.

But listen to me. Deadass.

We must begin by rejecting the pervasive narrative that systemic oppression is unchangeable.

That’s the Koolaid.

Girl. GIRL!

Do not lose yourself in this mess.
Do not lose the recipes, the memories, the photographs.
Do not lose the kids.
Do not lose the elders.
Do not lose the stories, the songs, the prayers.
Do not lose the ability to dream, to cry and cry out, to build.

And for the love of everything holy, do not forget the keys.

The keys our ancestors left us: mutual aid, collective organizing, and the stubborn belief that there’s a future worth fighting for.

The system banks on our silence. It banks on us forgetting that we’ve always been the blueprint—whether tending to our gardens, raising everybody’s children, crafting new worlds for each other to get lost in, or inventing entire genres of music.

We can rest, but we will not be silent.

The ability to remain unto yourself and your loved ones in the midst of peril? That’s our ancestral inheritance.

Let me be clear.

The stakes are high. Our very existence and futures depend on reclaiming our power and imagining new possibilities.

The "#softlife" trend? Cute. But it’s not enough. The soulwork of liberation requires us to envision and create futures that aren’t bound by the limits of a broken system.

Remember this:
We come from people who dreamed in the darkest nights of captivity, who turned whispers into shouts of freedom. We are their wildest dreams.

This is why they wrote, why they fought, why they left us maps disguised as songs, stories, and dances.

Read Parable of the Sower. Study Lauren Olamina’s resilience and the power of her imagination. Go back to Their Eyes Were Watching God and let Janie remind you what it means to live for yourself.

And then:

Organize. Connect. Nourish. Dream.

Do not let them hypernormalize your pain, your labor, or your existence.

You are not a cog in their machine. You are a whole ass galaxy, Sis.

This is our call to action: DO NOT BE SILENT. DO NOT BE STILL. EVERYTHING BLACK WOMEN SAY IS SCRIPTURE. GET IN FORMATION. GET INFORMATION. DO THE WORK YOUR SOUL MUST HAVE!

We are still here, and we are still ours.

Love y’all. Mean it. If you love me back, Buy Me A Book!
-B

FURTHER READING

1. This is a video that is found in full @cocoabrownonefunnymamma on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/cocoabrownonefunnymomma/reel/DFPR5b7sfq_/