A Mini Memoir: What Leaving Survival Mode and Learning to Rest Actually Looks Like
Rest sounded cute until I realized I did not know how to do it.
Not nap on the couch for an hour. Not take a random day off and still answer emails in my head. I mean real rest. The kind where nothing is on fire, nobody needs you right this second and you are not earning your worth by staying in motion.
That kind of rest felt strange to me.
If I am honest, it felt unsafe.
I did not fully understand that until I sat still long enough to hear the question underneath all my busyness: who am I when I am not doing something?
That question hit harder than I wanted it to.
Because I had an answer for who I was in pressure. I knew who I was when there was a deadline, a problem, a plan, a room to lead or something to save. I knew how to be useful. I knew how to show up tired and still make it happen. I knew how to keep moving even when I needed a minute.
But outside of that, I felt a little unfamiliar to myself.
And once I started tracing it back, it made perfect sense.
Since 2017, my life has been one long run. I finished by bachelor’s (with a one year old) then I started a new job (a few days after my degree was conferred) and was still trying to figure out what that meant for me professionally. Then I had a baby, (2018) which already changes everything in ways nobody can fully explain to you. Somewhere in the middle of that, I started grad school (2019) and finished an entire program in a year (2020) while raising two kids under five. Let’s not even talk about BLM and COVID.
Even writing that now makes me pause like, girl... what was actually going on?
At the time, it just felt normal. Not easy, but normal. There was a goal in front of me and responsibilities behind me, so I kept it pushing.
Then I took another job (2021) because the one I had was taking more from me than I was willing to keep giving. That alone felt big, but life did not exactly slow down after that. I started dealing with health issues that forced me to pay attention to my body in a way I had been avoiding. I started freelancing too, not just as a little side thing but as something I really wanted to build.
Then Black Women Marketers (2021) came into my life.
What started as a space to connect grew into something real. People showed up for it. They needed it. It mattered. Then MKTRHUB (2025) was born from that. A conference.A real experience. A room full of people who needed what we were building.
And I showed up for that too.
I kept going. I started agencies. I stopped them. I tried again. I co-hosted not one but two conferences. I stepped into bigger leadership. Then I got a promotion at work.
Everything was happening back to back. Sometimes on top of each other. Sometimes fighting for the same time, the same energy and the same version of me.
And through all of it, I never really stopped to process what was happening.
There was always something next.
That is what survival mode does. It makes urgency feel normal. It teaches you to trust pressure more than peace. It tells you pausing is risky and resting is something you earn after everything is handled.
So you keep adapting. You keep figuring it out. You keep telling yourself this is just a season. But some seasons do not end. They just change clothes.
That is what happened for me.
At some point I noticed people were calling me a marketer more than a creative. And while I understood why, it never sat right with me. Marketing is something I know how to do well. It is a real skill. It is work I have built and sharpened.
But creativity is deeper than that for me.
Creativity is who I am. And somewhere along the way, that part of me got quieter.
I stopped creating just because I wanted to. I stopped experimenting without a reason. I stopped making things that did not need to become content, money, strategy or proof of something. Everything started feeling tied to output.
That realization messed with me more than I expected.
Because it was not just about work. It was about identity. It was about realizing I had gotten so used to surviving that I no longer knew how to be with myself outside of performance.
That is what led me to one of the hardest choices I have made in a long time. I walked away from Black Women Marketers and MKTRHUB.
Not because they did not matter or they failed.
Not because I stopped caring.
I walked away because I needed space.
Space to hear myself think.
Space to feel what I had been skipping over.
Space to figure out what creativity looks like when it is not being pulled in ten directions.
Space to be a person, not just a producer.
That kind of space sounds simple until you are someone who has built her whole identity around being dependable, capable and consistent. When people know you as the one who always comes through, slowing down can feel like you are letting everybody down, including yourself.
And if I am being fully transparent, part of me still wrestles with that.
There is a part of me that wonders if I left too soon. A part of me that feels the weight of what those spaces meant to people. A part of me that hates leaving anything unfinished.
But there is also a deeper part of me that knows I cannot keep calling depletion success just because it looks impressive from the outside.
That is not health or peace.
That is not the kind of life I want.
Burnout does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like being high functioning and disconnected at the same time. Sometimes it looks like people praising your consistency while you are over there running on fumes and vibes.
That was me.
So now I am learning how to rest for real. And I am not saying that like I have mastered it. I have not. I am still in it. I am still figuring it out in real time. But I do know a few things already.
What relearning rest is teaching me
Rest will expose what busyness helped you avoid.
When I slowed down, I did not just feel relief. I felt grief, exhaustion and a lot of unanswered questions. That does not mean rest is not working. It means some of us have been using movement to outrun ourselves for a long time.
Being useful and being whole are not the same thing.
I know how to be helpful. I know how to show up and carry a lot. But I am learning that being needed is not the same as being nourished. You can be deeply relied on and still be deeply disconnected from yourself.
Creativity needs room, not just discipline.
I used to think I just needed to push through until inspiration came back. Whole time I needed space and quiet. I needed time that was not already spoken for. Creativity cannot breathe when every part of you is in survival mode.
You do not have to collapse to admit you are tired.
This one is big for me. A lot of us (specifically Black women) wait for a breakdown before we give ourselves permission to change something. But you do not have to wait until your body forces the point. You are allowed to listen sooner.
I think that is the part I am holding closest in this season.
I do not want to wait until I am completely empty to honor what I need or rest to be the thing I keep putting at the bottom of the list like some little bonus prize for overworking.
I want it to be part of how I live.
Not because I am lazy or suddenly lack ambition.
But because I am starting to understand that a life built only on survival will eventually make everything, even the good stuff, feel heavy.
And I do not want to live like that anymore. So this is the season I am in now. Slower. Quieter. Less performative. More honest.
Some days I feel clear and like I am learning how to be a person again from scratch.
But even in the uncertainty, I know this much: I cannot go back to being the version of me who only knew how to push through.
I have done that already.
Now I want to learn what it looks like to live without always bracing for impact.
If you have been stuck in go mode for so long that rest feels weird, maybe start there. Pay attention to what comes up when things get quiet; not to judge yourself, just to notice. You might be more tired than you let yourself admit
