You Don’t Have to Wait for the Crash-Out: Community Care & Black Women’s Mental Health
Black Girl Burnout
Kelley Bonner
4.7 • 765 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Mental Health Month bonus episode, Kelley sits down with Ashlee Edwards, founder and CEO of MindRight, to discuss community-centered mental health support for Black women. Together, they explore why healing shouldn’t begin only in crisis, how community care helps protect our capacity for joy, and what it looks like to build more human-centered systems of support through technology, intention, and connection.
Key Takeaways
- Mental health support should begin before burnout or crisis, not only after things fall apart.
- Community care is a powerful tool for healing, resilience, and protecting Black women from systems that demand overextension.
- Technology can support emotional wellness when it is used to deepen human connection rather than replace it.
Episode Highlights & Timestamps
- 00:01 – Why Black women deserve support before the “crash-out”
- Kelley and Ashlee discuss shifting mental health care from crisis intervention to everyday support and community care.
- 05:20 – Protecting our capacity for joy
- Ashlee shares why conversations about mental health must include intergenerational wisdom, joy, and abundance—not just trauma.
- 11:17 – Can technology support healing without replacing humanity?
- A nuanced conversation about AI, trust, emotional support, and why MindRight prioritizes real humans on the other side of the screen.
- 23:00 – What joy looks like in practice
- Ashlee reflects on spirituality, nature, intentional living, and the decisions she makes to actively protect her wellbeing.
Gentle Invitation
This week, consider one small way you can support your emotional wellbeing before you reach exhaustion. Maybe that looks like asking for support, spending time near something that grounds you, or letting yourself receive care instead of always being the one giving it. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s consistency and remembering that staying human is the work.
Connect with Ashlee Edwards
- Instagram: @IYA_Ashlee
- MindRight Website: MindRight
- Text MindRight for support: Text 886-886
- Learn more about MindRight’s community-centered emotional support platform for Black communities and Black women.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. |
| 0:08.7 | And this is a special bonus episode for Mental Health Month. |
| 0:14.8 | Today I'm joined by Ashley Edwards. |
| 0:16.8 | She's the founder and CEO of Mind Right Health. |
| 0:20.3 | This is a community-centered mental health platform helping people access emotional support |
| 0:26.0 | in more human ways. |
| 0:29.9 | Ashley is doing really thoughtful work at the intersection of mental health, technology, |
| 0:35.0 | community care. |
| 0:36.6 | And in this conversation, we talk about what it means to support our mental health, technology, community care. And in this conversation, we talk about what it means |
| 0:39.7 | to support our mental health before we hit burnout and why community matters so deeply for |
| 0:46.2 | black women and then how we protect our capacity for joy in a world that constantly asks us |
| 0:52.5 | to disconnect from ourselves. It's a great conversation. |
| 0:57.9 | Happy Friday. I hope you enjoy it. Let's get into it. Hi, Ashley. Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout |
| 1:05.2 | podcast. How are you doing today? I'm good. Thanks for having me on. Yes, happy to have you. You are here. We're going to be |
| 1:12.8 | talking a little bit later about the platform that you've created and how it operates and works. |
| 1:17.4 | And this is like a timely conversation. I think we need to be having about tech, about |
| 1:21.9 | mental health, about black women's mental health, and about the spaces and places that we can get help that we may not even know about. |
| 1:29.7 | And so I'm really excited to dive right in and talk to you, particularly about mental health itself, right? |
| 1:36.9 | That I think a lot of people, I think we're getting better at this. |
| 1:40.9 | Let me caveat that. |
| 1:41.9 | I think people are naturally looking for mental health services and particularly black women are accessing it at higher |
| 1:48.9 | rates than ever before, which is all a good news story. But also there's still stigma around |
... |
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