From Burnout to Boundaries: Reclaiming Beauty, Rest, and Purpose as a Black Artist

Burnout is too common in the Black community. We see that especially for creatives and caretakers. Here’s how I’m rebuilding my beauty business with purpose, boundaries, and peace.

Burnout isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s quiet. It can linger, and be slow to build and even slower to name. Sometimes it looks like success from the outside. It can be full bookings, long days, smiling photos. All the while on the inside, you’re exhausted, disconnected, or unsure how to keep going.

I’ve spent years pouring into my artistry and into my clients and my business. Throughout this, I’ve also realized something: I’ve been conditioned, like so many Black women, to believe that I have to earn my rest. I find myself walking through life believing that I need to overextend to prove my worth. That I have to keep going even when everything in me is asking for softness.

I’m in the middle of rewriting that story. Right now, I’m actively rebuilding. Not just my brand, but also my boundaries. Not just my calendar, but also my capacity. And I want to share what that process looks like. Honestly, imperfectly, and in real time.

In the Black community especially, the pressure to be exceptional is everywhere. We’re taught, due to society’s structures, that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far. That struggle is part of the process. That pushing through is just what we do.

And for a while, I did exactly that.

I filled every weekend, took every last-minute booking, packed up my entire kit at 3 AM to drive across the state, show up smiling, and give everything I had to everyone else. I was praised for being reliable, for being fast, for being the one who always showed up. But no one was checking on what it was costing me.

The reality is, burnout didn’t arrive all at once.

It crept in slowly. It showed up in the moments where I couldn’t feel present in my own work. It became prevalent in the days I was too tired to eat, to reset, to create anything just for me. I knew that my body was tired, but I didn’t feel like I was allowed to stop.

In our communities, exhaustion gets framed as excellence. Being the strong one becomes part of your identity. And if you’re not careful, you start to believe that slowing down is failure. That was me.

“Exhaustion gets framed as excellence. But I don't want to prove my worth through pain.”

I didn’t have a breakdown. I had a moment of clarity. It wasn’t dramatic. No big crash. Just a quiet realization that I couldn’t keep showing up for everyone else while slowly disappearing from myself.

I remember looking at my calendar and feeling nothing but dread. Not because I didn’t love the work, but because I had no space to breathe between the doing. I had built a life so tightly packed with obligations that there was no room for joy, no margin for softness, no time to just exist.

And the hardest part? Admitting that I did that to myself.

Not because I didn’t love myself, but because being a successful Black woman comes with so many pressures. Societal. Familial. Personal. We know that in order to be afforded the same opportunities as our white counterparts, we have to do quadruple the effort. And even then, we still risk being overlooked.

I had internalized the belief that being overworked meant being valuable. That if I stopped, everything I had built would crumble. That my boundaries would make me less desirable as an artist.

But that moment was the beginning. The beginning of asking better questions.

What would it look like to create from a place of peace?

What if I didn’t need to run myself ragged to be respected?

What if the best version of my artistry didn’t come from burnout, but from alignment?

“I didn’t stop because I was broken. I stopped because I wanted to be whole.”

Right now, I’m doing the quiet work. I’m giving myself permission to be more than what I produce. This is about returning to my art in a way that feels honest. This chapter is a reminder that I don’t have to sacrifice peace to be booked and respected. That softness can be a standard, not a luxury.

I’m still building. Still learning. More importantly, still unlearning too. I am in the season of attempting to shift my focus to what’s sustainable, what’s aligned, and what feels good in my spirit.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s presence.

And I want that for every Black woman I know. We deserve to create without running ourselves into the ground. We deserve businesses that don’t burn us out. We deserve lives that feel like our own.

If you’re reading this and feeling a little seen, I want you to know this:

You don’t have to earn your rest. You don’t have to prove your worth through pain. You don’t have to overextend just to be taken seriously. You are allowed to build something beautiful without burning yourself out in the process.

Whether you’re an artist, a bride, a caretaker, a creative, or just someone trying to hold it all together, I see you. I’ve been you. I am you. And I’m still becoming something softer, slower, and more grounded every day.

This season, I’m choosing beauty that includes me too.

And if you’ve been craving that kind of shift, take this as your push to start.

Softness is not the opposite of strength. It is the reward for surviving what tried to harden you.