Why I Do This Work: My Story and My Mission to Support Professional Black Women
A Message to the Black Woman Professional Who Is Carrying More Than Others May Know
If you are a Black woman professional navigating a demanding career, carrying multiple roles, leading in your workplace or community, and trying to make room for your own needs in the middle of it all — this message is for you.
Because I understand what it feels like to lead, uplift, and endure while privately wrestling with exhaustion, burnout, and the emotional load. Especially as a Black woman navigating professional spaces not designed with you in mind, alongside personal relationships that seem to demand unrealistic and unfair expectations.
I have known the weight of being:
the one people depend on,
the one who “figures it out,”
the one who “never drops the ball,”
the one who keeps smiling even when she’s angry or hurt,
the one who doesn’t have time to slow down, and certainly not break down, because too many people rely on her holding it all together.
I also know how deeply this experience is shaped by identity — by being a Black woman moving through systems that were not designed for our flourishing, our protection, or our rest.
Over the last two decades, I have dedicated my career to supporting Black women professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs because I have witnessed—personally and professionally—the toll of overworking, emotional labor, perfectionism, and structural bias on our mental health, relationships, and sense of self.
This work is not about teaching Black women how to endure more.
It is about helping us create success that does not require self-abandonment, chronic exhaustion, or silence.
In this post, I want to share the story behind this mission—not only so you understand the “why” behind my voice, my frameworks, and my programs, but so you can begin to recognize something essential:
Your success should not cost your sanity.
And for far too many Black women, it has.
Why This Work Matters for Professional Black Women Now
The experiences of Black women in professional spaces are not just personal — they are deeply shaped by systems and expectations that continuously demand more than they give. And the toll of these pressures is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Recent research illustrates this clearly:
Gallup reports that Black women experience some of the highest levels of burnout in the U.S. workforce across race and gender categories.
In Deloitte’s Women @ Work study, more than 50% of Black women say they plan to leave their employers within the next two years because of burnout, lack of support, and psychologically unsafe workplaces.
Research published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine shows that chronic discrimination and high stress levels contribute to disproportionately high psychological strain for Black women, including elevated symptoms of anxiety and depressive distress.
These numbers are not abstract data. They reflect the lived experiences of Black women navigating high expectations, emotional labor, workplace politics, and chronic responsibility—often with little structural or relational support.
Black women are not burning out because we are weak.
We are burning out because we are carrying the emotional load of entire systems, professional and familial.
This work matters now because too many Black women are:
excelling publicly while suffering privately
praised for strength while their exhaustion is ignored
doing everything “right” while feeling increasingly disconnected from themselves
And while the world benefits from our brilliance, labor, and leadership, the personal cost has become impossible to overlook.
This is why I do this work.
Because Black women deserve more than survival.
We deserve rest, support, peace, joy, alignment — and lives that honor who we truly are.
The Strong Black Woman Script
As Black women, many of us inherited a script that taught us how to survive long before we were ever invited to consider what it means to thrive.
We were raised watching the women before us carry more than anyone realized – managing households, supporting extended family, navigating work, absorbing emotional pain, and doing it all with a kind of silent endurance that was expected, even celebrated.
This script didn’t emerge from nowhere.
It was shaped by history, by racism, by sexism, by economic realities, by cultural expectations — and by the belief that a Black woman’s worth is measured by how much she can carry without breaking.
As Melissa Harris-Perry wrote in her work on the “crooked room,” Black women are constantly trying to find balance in environments that distort our image, our labor, and our humanity. We learn early how to adjust ourselves in ways that keep everything and everyone else upright — even if it means bending away from our own needs in the process.
And while this inherited strength helped generations of Black women survive unimaginable circumstances, it also came with a cost:
We were never taught what to do with our pain, our exhaustion, or our desire for rest.
We learned how to be dependable before we learned how to be supported.
We learned how to be excellent before we learned how to be enough.
We learned how to be strong before we ever learned how to be safe.
This script still shapes the lives of many Black women professionals today—externally successful, internally strained, and navigating expectations that rarely account for wellbeing, rest, or humanity.
Because this script is so familiar, exhaustion becomes normalized.
Rest feels risky.
Slowing down feels irresponsible.
And asking for help can feel unsafe—even when it’s necessary.
But that does not have to be our experience.
The truth is:
You were never meant to live your entire life playing a role that leaves no space for you, your needs, and your humanity.
Becoming a Psychologist—and Seeing the Same Story Everywhere
The Strong Black Woman script was something I was aware of on several levels. In college and graduate school, even when the lived experiences of Black women were not reflected in the curriculum, I took every opportunity to read, research, and write about women—particularly women of color—and the psychological cost of constantly having to be “strong.” When I later became licensed and opened my private practice, what I had studied for years showed up in real time, in real lives.
Many of the books and research that shaped my thinking then still inform my work today. I’ve compiled several of those foundational texts—along with newer favorites—into a free reading list for women who want to better understand the intersection of success, mental health, and overwork.
When I became a psychologist, I noticed the pattern almost immediately. Black women—often after years of pushing through—came into therapy exhausted. Not “I need a nap” tired, but deeply, physically, emotionally, and spiritually worn down.
They were:
overworked,
overcommitted,
under-supported,
They were navigating microaggressions and invisible labor, strategizing around systems that required them to be twice as competent with half the resources.
These women were brilliant, accomplished, and deeply committed — and they were silently suffering.
What they shared with me was not failure or inability. It was the cumulative weight of chronic overworking, over-responsibility, and emotional suppression—patterns shaped long before they ever entered my office.
Sound familiar?
Black women came into my office exhausted, not because they lacked resilience, but because they had been relying on resilience for far too long. And often, they were coming in late — after years of pushing through stress, silencing their needs, and holding everything together at work and at home.
And research supports what I was witnessing. According to the American Psychiatric Association, Black women are significantly less likely to access mental health support early, often because of cultural expectations of strength, stigma around vulnerability, and the belief that they “should be able to handle it.”
When these women came to my office, finally seeking help, they often struggled to honestly name what they were experiencing and the full impact on their lives. Many said things like:
“I’m not depressed… I’m just tired.”
“I don’t feel bad, I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”
“I’m fine. I just need to push through.”
“I don’t want to let anyone down.”
I heard these words over and over again — from women in medicine, higher education, leadership, business, law, politics, and even entrepreneurs. Women are trying to keep everything together while slowly losing pieces of themselves.
What I was witnessing was not individual pathology—it was a predictable response to cultural expectations and systems that consistently ask Black women to give more than they receive.
When the Personal and Professional Intersect
As I supported clients through their exhaustion, overwhelm, and silent suffering, I began to look at where this same pattern was showing up in my own life: I was carrying a version of the same story, living out parts of the same script.
There was a period when, on paper, everything looked wonderful. I was running The Rosetta Center. I had multiple contracts. I was supervising, teaching, consulting, and deeply engaged in my community. My husband and I were raising three children with limited local support.
My children's schedules seemed just as busy as mine. Most days, I felt like an Uber driver — shuttling kids to sports, theater, rehearsals, playdates, orthodontist appointments, doctor visits… all before I even sat down to do my paying job.
I wasn’t exercising.
I wasn’t resting.
I wasn’t having fun.
I wasn’t doing anything that nourished my spirit.
I was working.
And momming. And wifeing. And …you get it.
I was also pushing through worsening back pain that I treated as an inconvenience rather than a warning.
And underneath all of that, I had personal dreams, professional aspirations, creative ideas, and passions I never had the time — or energy — to pursue. I was building programs for other organizations but drifting further and further away from my own mission, my own purpose, my own joy.
But there was one moment that made everything glaringly clear.
I was doing too much—even though I enjoyed many of the things on my plate. I knew something needed to change, but letting go felt far more complicated than it looked on paper. I was afraid of letting people down. I had FOMO about future opportunities and worried that I would damage the professional reputation that I had worked so hard to build. Even with these feelings swirling around, I found the courage to tell an employer that I would not be renewing my contract for the following year — explaining clearly that I had too much on my plate and needed to release some things — she smiled at me and said:
“Yes! You’re thriving!”
I remember thinking:
Did you just hear anything I just said?
Did you hear the exhaustion in my voice?
Did you hear the part where I said I’m overwhelmed and overcommitted?
Apparently, she did not.
Because people often see the performance of Black women’s strength, without ever seeing the cost.
They see the productivity, not the pain.
They hear the accomplishments, not the confession.
They witness the mask, not the woman behind it.
And that moment stayed with me because it reflected something larger:
Black women are praised for their ability to carry everything while the world ignores the weight of it all.
That realization was both heartbreaking and clarifying. But it pushed me to ask myself:
What am I doing?
Who am I doing it for?
What is this pace costing me?
And what would my life look like if I allowed myself to live differently?
It was in that season — when the personal and professional collided — that it became even clearer that:
Black women need spaces where we are not invisible.
Where our exhaustion is not dismissed.
Where our dreams are not deferred.
Where our humanity is honored.
Spaces where we are not praised for suffering, but supported in living, and actually thriving.
That is what The Rosetta Center for Counseling and Wellness is all about.
Just Your Everyday Black Grandma
The Rosetta Center is not just the name of my practice.
It is a tribute and a promise.
It is named after my grandmother, Rosetta Mix, a woman who shaped my understanding of care, community, and quiet strength feistiness. When I say that, people often assume she must have been a trailblazer or highly accomplished woman — a holder of accolades, titles, or public recognition.
She wasn’t.
She was an everyday Black grandmother — the kind who raised five children, babysat every grandchild and great-grandchild, opened her home to foster youth and treated them like her own, and peeled sweet potatoes even when her fingers were twisted and crooked from arthritis because no one could make candied yams like grandma!
She supported my grandfather — a Black businessman and community leader — in all his pursuits at a time when opportunities for Black men were even more limited, and every success required sacrifice. She poured into her family, her community, and everyone who crossed her path.
But as I got older, I found myself wondering:
Who supported Grandma?
Who listened to her?
Who validated her dreams?
Who asked her what she wanted?
Who gave her space to rest?
And the truth is: women like her rarely had that space.
They simply carried on.
They simply endured.
They simply survived.
I created The Rosetta Center to be a space where Black women are seen for all of who they are, validated for what they experience, and encouraged to live lives of meaning and purpose — not just lives of responsibility.
A space where you don’t have to explain why you’re tired.
Where your “I’m overwhelmed” is taken seriously.
Where you don’t have to shrink yourself or perform strength.
Where your humanity is honored.
So it wasn’t just a business decision to name The Rosetta Center after my grandmother; it was a promise and commitment to myself and the women I serve that we deserve more than the survival scripts we inherited.
An Invitation to Check In With Yourself
If you’ve read this far, I want to invite you to pause and check in with yourself — honestly and without judgment.
Not to evaluate how productive you’ve been or how well you’re holding everything together, but to notice how your life actually feels as a Black woman professional navigating work, leadership, and responsibility in spaces that often demand more than they give.
Where are you thriving right now?
Where do you feel grounded, clear, and aligned?
And where are you simply pushing through?
Where are you overworking out of habit, obligation, or fear?
Where might you still be living by a script that once helped you survive, but no longer supports the life you want to live?
For many Black women professionals experiencing burnout or chronic stress, overworking and self-sacrifice were never conscious choices — they were survival strategies shaped by culture, expectations, and systems that rewarded endurance over wellbeing. Recognizing that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you’re becoming more aware of what this way of living is costing you.
If you’re ready to gently explore where you are and what may need to shift, I’ve created a free Create Your Desired Life Assessment to help you begin.
It’s designed specifically for Black women professionals who feel overworked, stretched thin, or out of alignment—and want clarity without judgment or pressure to change everything at once.
This is not about fixing yourself.
It’s about listening to yourself—honestly and compassionately.
