5 Things To Remember When Taking Unplanned Breaks From The Grind

Brown Girl Self-Care

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brown Girl Self-Care is where Black women reclaim our wholeness and power in a world that demands our labor but denies our humanity. Here, the care of ourselves—and the care for each other—become sacred acts of justice, powerful ways of honoring our humanity in a world that doesn’t.

In this episode of the Brown Girl Self-Care podcast, I’m opening up about what I learned from taking an unplanned break. After moving and needing time to settle in, I found myself sitting in the discomfort of not producing—of not showing up in the ways I usually do. And even though I knew I needed the rest, there was still that lingering feeling that I should be doing more.

I’ll share how this experience reminded me that we are often more tired than we realize, how the pressure to always be productive is deeply tied to colonization and capitalism, and why it’s so important to give ourselves permission to pause before burnout forces us to stop.

In this episode, I’m sharing five key things to keep in mind when you’re struggling to rest:

You’re probably more tired than you even realize. We’ve been conditioned to run on empty for so long that exhaustion can feel normal—until we finally stop.
Resting will make you uncomfortable at first. When we’re used to equating our worth with productivity, stepping back can feel unnatural. That’s colonization talking.
The world won’t fall apart because you take a break. We carry so much on our shoulders, but the truth is, things will keep moving even when we pause.
You don’t have to feel “ready” to rest. If you’re waiting for a perfect moment to slow down, it’ll never come. Your body, mind, and spirit need care now.
You have permission to pause. You don’t have to earn your rest. You don’t have to justify it. Rest is your birthright.

If you’ve ever felt uneasy about slowing down—like you’re somehow falling behind or not doing enough—this episode is for you.

Let’s take this journey together—we are worthy of this care.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code SELFCARE for a great deal: https://happymammoth.com
* Check out Wonderful Pistachios: https://WonderfulPistachios.com

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night. Cybersecurity. According to Vantar's latest state of trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. That's where Vanta comes in. Whether you're a startup, growing fast or already established, Vanta can help you get ISO-2701 certified and more without the headaches.
0:22.5	And Vanta allows your company to centralise security workflows,
0:26.2	complete questionnaires up to five times faster,
0:28.5	and proactively manage vendor risk to help your team not only get compliant, but stay compliant.
0:34.3	Stop stressing over cyber security and start focusing on growing your business. For a
0:39.5	limited time, our audience gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash go. That's va-n-ta.com
0:47.1	slash go for $1,000 off. Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on.
0:53.6	It's about keeping
0:54.4	everything secure. Hey, what's going on? You're listening to the Brown Girl Self-Care
1:00.5	podcast. My name is Bree, and I'm the host of the show, as well as the founder of Brown Girl Self-Care.
1:05.9	Brown-Girl self-care is a platform and space of intentional healing, joy, rest, and abundance for black
1:10.8	women. In today's episode, I, rest, and abundance for black women.
1:11.6	In today's episode, I want to share with you of four things that I experienced slash was
1:18.4	reminded of slash learned when I took an unplanned break.
1:23.9	So as you may know, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, I took a break for the last
1:30.1	couple of weeks because I officially made it moved to Arkansas. And I'll probably do a whole
1:38.6	separate episode on that because now is not the time. I really just want to talk about some
1:43.2	things that kind of came up for me when I took an
1:46.7	unplanned break because a lot of us, we have officially decided either just recently
1:54.0	or some time ago, we decided like we're getting off this train of just being hella productive, being hella, you know,
2:05.1	aligned with capitalism and productivity and all those things. And it sounds great. I'm here
2:12.6	for it. I'm excited that we're doing these things. But some things may pop up when you start to step away,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brown Girl Self-Care, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Brown Girl Self-Care and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.