The Weight We Carry: How Black Women Hold Trauma and Still Show Up Strong

There’s a particular kind of sigh that so many Black women know well. You prolly just took it!

You know the one, a sigh that comes from deep in the chest, somewhere between exhaustion and endurance. It’s the sound of holding so much. Responsibility, family, community, grief, excellence, fear, hope AND still showing up.

For generations, we’ve been asked to carry more than any one person should. And yet we keep moving, keep giving, keep loving, keep holding it all together. As a clinical psychologist, as a Black woman, and as someone who has witnessed both the brilliance and the burden of Black womanhood up close, I often find myself asking:

What’s it cost?...

 “The Strong Black Woman” – The Majestic Myth

Many of us were raised with some version of the message: Be strong. Don’t break. Keep pushing. Handle it. Don’t let anyone see you struggle. You’re 10x better, and you have to work 10x harder.

It’s a survival strategy that helped our mothers, aunties, grandmothers, and great‑grandmothers navigate a world that often refused to protect them. Strength was armor. Strength was currency. Strength was the difference between making it and not. Here's what I see in the therapy room and in the communities I serve:

Strength can also pigeon hole us. It can become a cage.

When we are socialized to be the helper, the fixer, the reliable one, the “go‑to,” the caretaker, the backbone, we learn to do so at the sacrifice our own needs. Especially because capacity is a reality. We learn to endure things that hurt. We ignore our bodies even when they shout. We normalize pain. We call resilience and survival our personality.

And eventually, the weight becomes too heavy for even the strongest among us.

How Trauma Shows Up in Our Bodies

Trauma doesn’t just live in memory. It lives in the body, in headaches, tight shoulders, restless sleep, irritability, and that constant “on‑edge” feeling many of us think is just part of life.

Many of us have learned to push through stress so automatically that by the time we notice we’re overwhelmed, we’re already in burnout, or shutdown, at our wits end. We don’t call it trauma.

We call it “just being tired.”

We call it “one of those weeks.”

We call it “handling things.”

We call it “plugging away.”

But unprocessed trauma, especially generational trauma, whispers, and sometimes SCREAMS through the nervous system. It tells us:

• don’t rest,

• don’t trust,

• don’t let go,

• don’t fall apart.

  
  

It keeps us in survival mode long after the threat is gone. And for those of us surrounded by threat, we’re always in this mode.

So Many Black Women Aren’t Receiving What We Give

In the community work I do, in the classroom, and in therapy spaces, I see how often Black women are positioned as the emotional and spiritual center of everything around them: families, churches, neighborhood initiatives, workplaces.

We pour out wisdom, care, skill, sensitivity, prayer, connection, and creativity.

And who pours back into us?

We’re expected to perform excellence under pressure, mediate conflict, solve community problems, show up professionally spotless, and somehow remain emotionally available to everyone in our orbit. Say whet?!

This is what we might call functional invisibility:

We are visible enough to be needed… but invisible enough that our needs are overlooked.

Choosing Gentleness: The Beginning of Healing

If you’re reading this and nodding your head so far, saying “Duh, you preaching to the choir. So what do we do?!” here’s the truth I want to offer:

You deserve softness. You deserve slowness. You deserve safety. You deserve support.

And you high key never have to earn it.

What I’m glad to report is, in 2026, we’ve been saying this out loud. Healing for Black women often begins with permission. And I, master of my own universe, give you some of mine, and encourage you to give yourself some too:

• the permission to rest without guilt,

• the permission to say “I do not have capacity for that today,”

• the permission to feel sadness or anger without shame,

• the permission to ask for help,

• the permission to not be the strong one.

Sometimes healing looks like therapy. Sometimes it looks like unlearning what we believed about ourselves. Sometimes it looks like a nap, a walk, a boundary, a full sentence “no,” a moment of stillness, or a good ugly cry we didn’t know we needed.

A Grounding Exercise for Black Women Carrying Too Much

If you’re feeling the weight right now, can I introduce this short practice?

1. Place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach.

2. Take a slow, deep breath in for four seconds.

3. Hold it for four seconds

4. Exhale for six seconds.

5. Ask yourself gently: What am I carrying that does not belong to me?

6. Ask: What would it feel like to set down one piece of that weight today?

Even a moment of release can shift the nervous system from survival to presence.

We Don’t Heal Alone

Black women have always been each other’s refuge. When we are witnessed, held, affirmed, and supported by other Black women, our healing accelerates. Whether through sister circles, therapy, mentorship, church communities, group spaces, or friendships built on honesty rather than performance, healing becomes possible.

Not easy.But possible.

Not perfect, possible.

A Final Word

If you feel tired, it doesn’t mean you’re failing. If you feel overwhelmed, it doesn’t mean you’re weak. If you are carrying too much, it doesn’t mean you’re incapable. You’ve hit capacity.

And you deserve a life where you don’t have to be invincible to be valued.