💭 Why Do Women Always End Up Doing All the Emotional Work?

You’re not imagining it.
Every time peace needs patching, someone turns their eyes toward a woman.
Every time rage fills a room, someone expects a woman to whisper it back into calm.
And when the dust settles, the world forgets who caught the storm.

That’s labor.
It’s not “personality.” It’s not “just how you are.”
It’s the centuries-old assignment women were never meant to carry alone.

The Ancestral Weight

From plantation kitchens to protest lines, women—especially Black women—have been drafted into the role of healer, fixer, translator, and moral compass.
We were told to keep everyone’s spirit alive, even when ours was bone-tired.
We stitched families, churches, movements, and revolutions together with tenderness no one thought to repay.

It’s in our DNA to notice. To soothe.
But notice how that gift was twisted into a duty.
How love became a full-time job.
How “strong Black woman” became code for you can survive without help.

We didn’t agree to this. We inherited it.

The Modern Version of the Same Old Theft

Now it wears new clothes: “You’re just so emotionally intelligent.”
“You’re so good with people.”
“You’re the heart of the team.”

Translation: You will handle what we refuse to face.

In homes. Workplaces. Activist rooms.
The work of peace—of holding it all together—still slides, silent and heavy, onto women’s shoulders.

And when we stop?
The world doesn’t ask, “How can we share the weight?”
It asks, “What’s wrong with you?”

The Radical Reclaiming

Let them call your quiet rebellion what they will.
Refusing to over-function is not coldness.
It’s recovery. It’s clarity. It’s sacred refusal.

Because womanism knows the truth:
You are not the world’s mother unless you choose to be.
And even mothers rest.
Even healers deserve healing.
Even saints get to set boundaries.

The revolution is not just marching—it’s the moment a woman says,
I will not bleed just to keep your peace intact.

The Prayer Beneath the Rage

You don’t have to explain why you’re tired.
You don’t have to prove your softness.
You don’t have to fix what refuses to learn.

Liberation begins when your compassion turns inward—
when you offer the same care to yourself that you’ve been pouring into everyone else.

That’s not selfishness.
That’s restoration.
That’s womanist gospel.

Affirmation

I no longer confuse endurance with love.
I no longer serve systems that survive on my silence.
I am not infinite supply.
My rest is a revolution handed down from every woman who refused to die just to be good.

If liberation costs women their peace, it is just a new kind of cage.