Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today I want to say,

Hey, you, welcome. You're home. I want you to imagine walking into a space made just for you, a space where you don't have to perform or explain or push through, a space where your needs are not an afterthought, but a priority. That's what this episode and this podcast is about.

Today I want to close at our month with the theme of opting into healing through rest,

all about rest here, and talk a little bit about what we learn this month and what I think we need going forward and more importantly,

how the Black Girl Burnout podcast is committed to helping you achieve the best version of

yourself. Over the past few weeks, we've really explored what it means to truly rest. We've

talked about guilt. We've talked about stillness. We've talked about boundaries. We've talked about emotional exhaustion. But at the heart of all this is a deeper need.

I really believe that right now more than ever, what black women need is more tenderness and we

deserve more consideration. I have been saying over and over again that my mantra, really for the past

few years, has been, when life gets hard, I become soft. I tell myself that because I live in a

world where softness is not something that was taught to me as my right to take up that I instead was told I need to be tough,

I need to fight, I need to be poised at all time for some kind of battle, I need to be armored

up. And as I get older, I just realize that has not served me well. That, well, let me be clear, it has served me well in some areas in my life.

I've dominated in career spaces and I have been a high achiever. It has often led me to feel that I'm

alone, that I don't have the support I need, that I have to do everything by myself.

And part of softness and me adopting that is a tool to prevent burnout.

And also, it is a way that I have brought more tenderness into my life.

And so tenderness in practice looks like first being kind to yourself. You know, I don't want to rest with guilt anymore. I want to speak to myself with kindness instead of criticism. I can remember growing up, I had the most harsh inner voice. It was always narrating all my flaws, all the things I did wrong, and I carried it

with me way into adulthood. It's about letting myself feel instead of always having to hold it

together. And so I want to create a space like that for you where you can be tender toward yourself

and tender in how you build your life and how I built my life.

That means that I consciously choose what feels good versus just what looks good on paper.

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