Hey, girl, hey

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Hey Bae,

Some Sundays the pot simmers soft. This one has a bone in it.

I want to talk about what we do when we save someone, and whether saving is where our job ends or where it begins. It's tender, so I'll say up front: if you're carrying something heavy right now, read this when you have room for it.

If you need somewhere to set the weight down tonight, you can call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) any hour.

You don't have to be at the edge to reach out. You just have to be tired.

Now — pull up a chair.

The spice

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What Did We Save Her To?

Two years ago I was lying in bed, suicidal, and a question came up that I still haven’t been able to put down: why do we work so hard to keep people alive without working just as hard to change the conditions making their lives unbearable?

I got better. I’m grateful I stayed. My life today holds things I couldn’t have imagined from that bed, and I still think the question was fair.

I came across Alexandre Baril’s idea of compulsory aliveness, the expectation that staying alive is always the right outcome, even when a person says otherwise, and it brought me right back to that room. Here’s what I keep landing on: we diagnose the person. Depression. Anxiety. Trauma. We rarely diagnose the conditions. Poverty does something to a person. Racism does something to a person. Isolation, instability, a world that keeps you in survival ... those do something too.

Therapy helps. Medication helps. Coping skills help. None of them can make an unhealthy system healthy.

We pull her out of the water. Good. Now what? Do we ask why she was drowning, or do we just make her well enough to survive the water again?

Maybe saving a life is the beginning of our responsibility, not the end of it.

​Read the full essay​

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What’s in the Pot

Reads for this week. Take what feeds you.

The “Strong Black Woman” Is Exhausted — Forbes One of the conditions I’m talking about, named out loud. The schema hands us the mask, the self-reliance, the caretaking like they’re virtues, then sends the bill: depression, anxiety, sleepless nights. The sickness isn’t only inside her — it’s in a rule she was raised to obey.

​Read Strong Black Woman Is Exhausted​

Why Black Women Face Burnout and the Path to Self-Care — Psychology Today The gentle counterweight. It won’t fix the water. I’d never tell you it could, but it gives the woman still in it somewhere to catch her breath: limit access, protect your energy, stop earning the right to exist.

​Read Why Black Women Face Burnout and the Path to Self Care​

How Sister Circles Help Black Women Thrive — The Miami Times Sometimes prevention looks like a circle of sisters who notice you’re going under before you do. A tradition running back 150 years, lowering anxiety and building belonging — a room where you don’t have to be the strong one.

​Read How Sister Circles Help Black Women Thrive​

Put her on your radar

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Nedra Glover Tawwab

Charlotte therapist & author

She’s home team. A licensed therapist who came to Charlotte in 2009, opened Kaleidoscope Counseling, and turned Black women’s mental health into New York Times bestsellers (Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Drama Free, The Balancing Act). For an issue about what we save people to, she’s spent twelve years insisting our pain deserves real care, not just a diagnosis and a discharge.

​Meet Nedra​

GET Curious

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If success wasn’t just that you survived a hard season, but that the season became livable ... what one condition in your life would have to change for that to be true?

Sit with it. You don’t have to answer today.

From my kitchen

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The EXHALE Invitation

A soft place to land after a heavy read. EXHALE is a guided invitation to breathe, unclench, and remember you’re allowed to rest without earning it. It won’t fix the conditions — but it gives you somewhere gentle to catch your breath while the bigger work goes on.

​Come exhale with me ​

On The Calendar

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You’re Invited: BLKGRL Recess — Golden Jubilee Edition

Saturday, September 12, 2026 · Dupp & Swat, 1824 Statesville Ave, Charlotte

Bae, I’m turning 50 ... and I’m not doing it quietly.

I spent this whole issue asking what makes a life livable. This is my answer, thrown in a room full of Black women: BLKGRL Recess.

Because somewhere along the way we were told rest had to be earned and play was for children, and I’m calling all of that a lie. Recess is the point. Joy is the assignment. Ease is not the reward at the end. It’s the whole meal.

Fifty years is a Golden Jubilee, and I want to spend mine the way I want us all to get to live: soft, gold, laughing, held. No agenda but delight. No one keeping score of how much we can endure. Just Black girls, out to recess, at one of the most beautiful Black-owned spaces in the city.

If you’ve been in these pages with me, you’re not a stranger; you’re a sister. Come play.

​RSVP & details​

I’m alive today. That matters to me, and I can be grateful I stayed while still asking harder of the systems that make so many of us need saving in the first place. Both things get to be true. That’s the whole gumbo.

Take care of the woman in the mirror this week. Somebody needs her ... and so does she.

Pour me a bowl, Brandi

If this reached you on a hard day: you can call or text 988 anytime. Reply to this email too — I read them.

Life’s Gumbo is where I make meaning from the stories we inherit, the systems we navigate, and the everyday moments that quietly shape who we become. If this one resonated, forward it to a sister who’s been carrying too much.