You Are Allowed to Choose a Life That Doesn’t Hurt
Black Girl Burnout
Kelley Bonner
4.7 • 763 Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this manifesto-style year-end episode, Kelley closes out 2025 by naming the new foundation of Black Girl Burnout: five gentle “commandments” designed to help Black women opt out of struggle and choose softness, joy, and liberation. Reflecting on a year of global change, personal evolution, and collective exhaustion, she reframes rest, ease, joy, softness, and freedom from unnecessary pain as non-negotiable truths—not rewards. This episode sets the tone for 2026 and introduces the four pillars guiding the podcast forward: soft life liberation, practical healing for real life, joy and creative living, and sustainable money, work, and productivity without burnout.
Key Takeaways
- Rest is not a reward—it is the first response and a necessary foundation for clarity, creativity, and survival.
- Ease and excellence are not opposites; joy- and ease-led living creates more sustainable success.
- Joy is not frivolous—it is data that helps guide decisions, boundaries, and aligned living.
- You are allowed to choose a life that does not hurt, even if no one around you ever has.
Episode Highlights + TIMESTAMPS
- 00:02:44 – Introducing the Black Girl Burnout Commandments and why this moment calls for a new foundation
- 00:05:10 – Commandment #1: Rest as the first response, not the last resort
- 00:06:30 – Commandment #2: Why ease is not the enemy of excellence
- 00:08:09 – Commandment #3: Joy as a powerful and necessary data point
- 00:13:00 – Commandment #5: Choosing a life that does not hurt—and opting out of inherited struggle
An Invitation for the Year Ahead
If this episode resonated, choose just one commandment to carry with you into 2026. Let it be a quiet anchor rather than a checklist. And if you want to go deeper, you’re invited to join Kelley on Substack for monthly workshops and Q&A—designed with joy, ease, and sustainability at the center.
Support the Show
Like, share, and subscribe on all platforms, and find us on social media
@blackgirlburnout
Subscribe to our newsletter: blackgirlburnout.com
Watch the episode on YouTube
Drop a review—help us spread the word that rest is not weakness.
Stay in Touch
Join our Substack family for weekly reflections, tools, and behind-the-scenes notes from Kelley.
Become a paid Substack subscriber ($5/month—the cost of a latte!) for exclusive resources to support your burnout-free life.
Our Sponsors
Check out Pharmanutra: pharmanutra-us.com
Savvy Ladies: https://www.savvyladies.org/
Advertising Inquiries: RedCircle
Privacy & Opt-Out: RedCircle
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Super.com and use my code super.com/credit for a great deal: https://super.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 | Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today is a special episode. I'm really kind of excited. We are closing out the year. It's been a good one. I have been so grateful for each and every one of you who is listening to this podcast. |
| 0:23.4 | It makes all a difference. |
| 0:25.8 | It reminds me that what this podcast stands for, what we are all about as a community has never been more needed, and that we're not alone. |
| 0:41.8 | So thank you from the bottom of my heart for a fantastic 2025 for Black Girl burnout. There's been some changes and you all rode with them. I went from |
| 0:48.9 | three times a week podcasting to once a week. I also started Substack this year, and that has exploded in ways I just |
| 0:58.6 | didn't anticipate or imagine. And as I always do, the most over there at Substack, I was doing |
| 1:06.2 | three times a week posting, and I had an $8 subscription tier. I have since dropped that subscription tier to $5 just because I realize that what black women |
| 1:16.8 | need more than ever are tools and ease. |
| 1:21.7 | And so now the membership, if you join us on Substack, gives you both. |
| 1:25.1 | Instead of doing weekly content drops, I'm doing a monthly workshop |
| 1:28.6 | that I do for my clients during my day, practical skills for life around burnout recovery, |
| 1:36.0 | around perfectionism, around managing corporate life and excelling professionally. I'm going to |
| 1:43.0 | give that to the Substack paid subscribers for |
| 1:45.9 | five bucks a month. Once a month, we're going to connect, we're going to meet, we're going to |
| 1:49.9 | chit-chat. I'm going to give you content that hopefully changes the way you live your life |
| 1:55.0 | and tools to do it, along with a Q&A episode every month for the members. This is a way that honors both you and both me and my capacity and what I can get done |
| 2:05.6 | in a day so I don't burn out but still stay so excited and engaged. |
| 2:09.5 | So now is the time as we're thinking about new year, new possibilities, new things you |
| 2:16.2 | want to do and learn for yourself. Think about the membership. |
| 2:20.8 | $5 a month? You can cancel at any time. It could be for you. Anyways, that's the exciting things going on in Substack and the exciting year Black Girl burnout has had. |
| 2:31.0 | But today's episode is special because I feel like this is going to be the manifesto |
| 2:38.2 | episode. It's the moment where I share the guiding principles that are going to shape not just |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kelley Bonner, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Kelley Bonner and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.