When Rest Is Resistance: What Burnout Really Looks Like for BIPOC Mental Health
Estimated read time: 5 minutes Summary Burnout is not just a personal failure or a lack of self-care, especially for BIPOC communities. It's often the cumulative result of navigating: historical trauma generational expectations systemic oppression This post explores how internalized productivity culture disproportionately affects BIPOC mental health and how reclaiming rest is a radical act of resistance and healing. Unlearning the Need to Be Twice as Good For much of my life, rest didn’t feel like an option. It felt like a weakness. Growing up, I learned, directly and indirectly, that to survive, I had to keep going. There was no room for pause, softness, or asking for help. There were times when I truly believed I had to earn my worth by staying busy, performing twice as hard, and never letting anyone see me struggle. I grew up thinking that constant motion was the norm, that rest was something you did only at the end of the day, once everything else was d...