When Her Fire Becomes an Emergency
We love to celebrate a woman who is “on fire.” She is serving, creating, mentoring, organizing, accepting invitations, and opening doors for others. She walks into unfamiliar rooms and creates a path where one did not exist. We call her committed, courageous, and resilient. We call her a trailblazer. But I have learned that there is a difference between the fire that illuminates a woman’s path and the fire that consumes her. Both can look like passion and productivity from the outside. She may continue leading the meeting, encouraging the team, and caring for everyone around her while quietly losing the emotional and physical reserves she needs to care for herself. At that point, “This woman is on fire” is no longer a celebration. It is an emergency.
I know because I have been that woman. Before the pandemic, I was serving, creating, organizing, encouraging, and leading. When the world shut down, I did not stop. I simply changed platforms. I moved the meetings online, found new ways to serve, and continued burning while I was blazing. The world became still, but I did not. I had learned how to answer every call to lead, but I had not learned how to answer the call to rest. I did not understand that the dedication others admired could coexist with deep depletion. I was still showing up, but I was using myself as fuel for the work I believed I was called to do.
The research helps us understand that this is not an isolated experience. Gallup found that, from 2022 through 2025, an average of 29 percent of women in leadership roles experienced frequent burnout, compared with 19 percent of men leaders. The difference is significant, but it does not tell the whole story for women of color. The Black Women Thriving study listened specifically to 1,431 Black women professionals across public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Eighty-eight percent said they had sometimes, often, or always experienced workplace burnout. Even more personal to me, 78 percent reported having no emotional reserves left at the end of the workday.
No emotional reserves.
What does that mean for the woman who is still expected to lead, mentor, care for her family, serve her community, and prepare for her next opportunity? What happens when she is praised for being strong but is given no space to be tired? Catalyst describes another part of this burden as an “emotional tax.” Its research found that nearly 60 percent of professionals of color felt on guard, consciously preparing themselves to encounter racial or gender bias. A woman of color may therefore be doing more than performing her leadership role. She may also be monitoring how she speaks, how she responds, how much emotion she reveals, and whether one mistake will be used to question her competence. That constant readiness carries a cost.
This is why I am no longer willing to describe rest as merely something nice a woman does for herself after everything else is finished. For a trailblazer, the work may never be completely finished. Rest is a leadership necessity. It protects her mind, body, and soul. It preserves the clarity, creativity, compassion, and judgment she needs to lead. It also helps ensure that the path she creates remains open for those coming behind her.
My practices of rest include silence, contemplation, Sabbath, walking, and protected pauses where nothing is required of me except my presence. Those pauses help me ask: What must I continue carrying? What can I release? What can someone else now lead? Where must I stop before my body forces me to stop?
We must also learn to look more closely at our sisters. When we see a woman serving, producing, and holding everything together, we must ask whether her fire is radiating from her or consuming her. We cannot keep applauding her productivity while overlooking her cry for help.
My invitation is simple: Blaze your trail, but do not become the fuel that keeps it burning. Within the next seven days, schedule one protected period of rest and honor it as seriously as you would an important leadership meeting. Your calling does not require your destruction. Rest is how you remain present, whole, and well enough to live to see where the trail leads.