The Summer of Yes: Reclaiming Rest, Joy, and Radical Ease

Black Girl Burnout

Kelley Bonner

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelley kicks off June with a powerful declaration: this is the Summer of Yes. In this deeply affirming episode, she explores what it means to embrace radical rest, joy, and ease, especially for Black women who are often taught that they must hustle to be worthy. As she reflects on grief and healing, Kelley also reminds listeners that joy is not the absence of struggle, but the resistance to it. This episode is both a soft invitation and a bold call to action: to reclaim summer not as a season of over-productivity, but as a sacred space to say YES to softness, delight, boundaries, and fun.

What You’ll Learn

How to shift from survival mode into intentional joy.
Why rest is not optional—it’s essential.
Ways to say "yes" to joy and "no" to energy drainers.
The radical act of celebrating yourself without guilt or apology.

Key Takeaways & Timestamps:

[04:00] Say YES to Radical Rest: Instead of hustling through summer, Kelley challenges listeners to redefine rest as a revolutionary act—and make space for true rejuvenation in everyday moments.

[07:03] Joy Is Resistance: Kelley reframes joy as an act of defiance in a world that conditions Black women to glorify struggle. She invites us to consider how delight can coexist with grief.

[08:11] Boundaries Are Beautiful: Whether it’s people, places, or obligations, Kelley emphasizes the power of saying no to what drains you—and yes to what restores you.

[10:55] Design Your Summer With Intention: Listeners are guided to reclaim their time, whether that’s through slower mornings, sacred Sundays, or committing to just one restful ritual each week.

Support This Show

Are you creating your Summer of Yes?

Whether it’s sleeping in, brunching solo, or finally saying no to that thing—you deserve joy without permission or guilt.

✨ Snap a pic or video of how you're saying YES to joy, rest, and ease

✨ Tag @blackgirlburnout

✨ Use the hashtag #SummerOfYes

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today we're going to be talking about the word yes.
0:07.3	And really building into June's theme, which is the summer of yes. Yes, we're going to be talking about all the ways to affirm rest, fun, and freedom.
0:19.3	And let's be honest, we could all use more of that. It's a new month.
0:24.5	It's a new season. And it's a new opportunity to choose joy intentionally. At the end of last
0:31.8	month, I talked about grief. And I just want to say, so many of you reached out to me about this episode and how
0:40.4	personal it was for you, how you felt seen and appreciated. And I just want to say thank you.
0:47.3	And I want to also give you the biggest hug I can find to give you because it's brave to talk
0:53.3	about your own grief experiences and also affirming
0:56.8	for me on the other end of the microphone when I talked about mine. I'll be honest, I was a little
1:02.5	nervous about this episode because grief is deeply personal and I didn't want anyone to think
1:07.7	that I was glossing over the fact that some people are absolutely
1:11.0	devastated by loss and maybe don't feel like they can get up right now. If that's you, that's
1:18.0	okay. But I also heard from so many of you who talked about the death of parents and relatives.
1:25.4	Some of you also talked about the death of dreams, loss of friendships. The point is,
1:31.0	there's so much grief happening in the world right now amongst our community and in the world,
1:37.2	and the episode really hit a chord. Thank you for sharing. And I also want you to know that while we're shifting a little bit
1:47.5	in our theme, grief is something I want to continue to come back to. Again, I really feel like now is
1:55.7	the time to step into a skill set that I have, which is the ability to hold hope and heartache at the same time.
2:04.1	And while I am by no means an expert at grief or in no means an expert at hope,
2:11.0	I do think that now is the time to talk more about these things.
2:16.7	Now is the time to lean in to naming what is ailing us.
2:22.6	And a lot of that is grief. And if you are struggling with that, I want to just also say that it's okay to think about and seek help.
	...

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