Rest Black Women Rest

Someone asked me why America's streets remain quiet, and I replied, "Because they're waiting for Black women to lead the charge, and that's not happening this time. We’ve done our part”. 🤷🏾‍♀️

There's a profound resonance in witnessing Black women finally exhale, stepping back from their historic role as America's moral compass and revolutionary vanguard. This collective pause isn't absence, it's presence reconfigured, a deliberate reclamation of energy that has been consistently extracted without reciprocity or acknowledgement.

The pattern has been evident throughout history: Black women organize, strategize, and mobilize while carrying multiple burdens across intersecting oppressions. We’ve consistently shown up at democracy's critical junctures, only to be rendered invisible once the immediate crisis passes. 👀

What we're observing now reflects a painful truth: many would rather witness societal collapse under familiar leadership than acknowledge salvation through Black women's wisdom and work. This preference reveals deep-seated biases that prioritize comfortable destruction over transformative restoration. Yet, even in this moment of justified retreat, the profound empathy embedded in Black women's political and social consciousness remains.

This capacity, to understand suffering because you've been forgotten, to recognize injustice because you've experienced erasure, creates an ethical framework that transcends simple self-interest. This momentary stillness carries revolutionary potential precisely because it disrupts expected patterns of care and labour.

It invites essential questions about who bears responsibility for collective liberation and how movements sustain themselves when their most dedicated architects finally claim their right to rest.

AA✨

(Image by @paigebydesign)