Hello AFIYA readers! I pray that August is being gentle to you as we transition out of summer and into autumn.
For me, it’s been a whirlwind of a summer. A lot of moving parts. Some beautiful. Some challenging. Some moments that stretched me in unexpected ways.
This summer had me thinking about something many Black women know intimately: the way softness can often feel like something that comes after.
After the work is complete.
After everyone is cared for.
After the responsibilities are handled.
After the storm has passed.
Softness becomes a destination waiting at the end of endurance.
Yet the deeper truth is that softness has always belonged to us.
I often find myself reflecting on how many of us have learned to approach rest, peace, and gentleness as something we arrive at through achievement. We push, accomplish, nurture, solve, and survive. We become skilled at carrying what “needs” to be carried. Somewhere along the way, the question quietly changes from How am I doing? to Have I done enough to finally deserve ease?
And perhaps the most revealing part of that question is the story we tell ourselves:
When I’ve done enough, I’ll finally deserve softness and rest.
But “enough” keeps moving.
There is always another responsibility.
Another goal.
Another person who needs us.
Another problem to solve.
The finish line shifts because this is never only about accomplishment. At its deepest level, it is about a reality that clashes with our human longing to feel worthy of tenderness, care, and peace.
For Black women, this experience exists within a distinctive convergence of race, gender, history, and cultural expectations. These forces shape how we understand ourselves. They make softness, peace, and restoration feel connected to extraordinary effort.
Research helps us understand why this pattern is so deeply rooted.
Across generations, Black women have carried extraordinary legacies of leadership, caregiving, and resilience. Our strength has protected families, built communities, and shaped history. Strength is a profound part of our inheritance.
Psychologist Cheryl Woods-Giscombé offers language for understanding one aspect of this experience through the Superwoman Schema. Her research explores how many Black women experience pressure to demonstrate strength, manage multiple responsibilities, care for others, and persevere through significant challenges. This framework recognizes strength as both a powerful resource and a trauma response shaped by lived realities.
Over time, the nervous system can begin to recognize overextension as familiar.
Public health researcher Sherman James introduced the concept of John Henryism, describing a pattern of high-effort coping in response to chronic social and economic challenges. Persistence and dogged determination become essential tools for navigating adversity. Research connected to this framework highlights the relationship between prolonged high-effort coping and the impact of chronic stress on the body.
Public health researcher Arline Geronimus expanded our understanding of this through the theory of weathering, which examines how ongoing exposure to social stressors can affect physical and mental health over time.
Together, this research invites us into a deeper understanding of the dynamic many of us are living within.
A dynamic that breaks our bodies, our minds, our souls, and our psyches.
The research gives us a sober-eyed look at the environment we are navigating. It helps us name the connection between resilience and exhaustion, between devotion and depletion, and between the ability to endure and the longing to be cared for.
It gives language to an experience many Black women recognize:
The feeling that peace is waiting for us on the other side of something we never seem to achieve.
This awareness matters.
Before we can transform a belief, we must first recognize it.
Before we can cultivate a different relationship with rest, we must understand the story we have inherited about why rest and softness feel so difficult to receive.
The research helps us name the terrain.
In my next post, I want to explore how we can gently begin to shift our perspective. How do we reconnect with the truth that rest is not something we reach after everything is complete? How do we allow softness, peace, and restoration to become part of the process itself?
That is the journey ahead.
A return to remembering what has always belonged to us.
Until next time, be well.
Erica Noelle is a writer and creative devoted to helping women return to the wisdom of their hearts. Through her work, she explores softness, emotional truth, and the quiet power of connection with self and community. Her passion is helping women connect with the deepest, most intimate parts of themselves.
Erica is the author of I Sit at the Center of My Constellation: A Handbook for Heart-Centered Humans. She and her 7 year old daughter, Kora, are also the founders of KE WonderLab, a loving and playful space for kids to connect with their own inner authority and wisdom.
Erica is a lover of softness and beauty, and dedicates herself to curating spaces that invite people to slow down, feel deeply, and return to themselves with care.
