By Jeannette WadeShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberThe holiday season represents work piling up, mounting pressures to shop and decorate and the added weight of having to pretend to be the one who “has it all together” at family gatherings. During Thanksgiving 2022, I found myself in the emergency room—not because of kidney stones as I suspected, but because of stress. Me, a scholar of the strong Black woman trope, had burned out. I had heard from my own research participant about the pressures to “be the perfect employee, perfect parent, perfect woman, perfect wife, the perfect daughter,” and I was there! I had become the strong Black woman I warned audiences about.
Climbing out of burnout meant finding a therapist, gym, new employer, spirituality, nature and fun. Going through that process led to my commitment to helping other Black women avoid the same destiny. The sad truth was that my story wasn’t unique; it reflected a broader truth about how pressures to be “strong” both sustained and endangered Black women. Although many see “strength” as a positive trait, there is a point where strength becomes toxic. This misconception leaves doctors thinking Black women are less susceptible to pain, employers thinking Black women can take on extra duties with no pay increase and Black women ignoring declines in their own mental and physical health.
...Who are strong Black women? They are women who have consistently been tasked with caring for others both personally and professionally, being resourceful in the face of scarcity, heading households both financially and domestically and being beautiful, composed and emotionally unscathed while doing so.
For many Black women “strong” is a title worn like a badge of honor. Strong is what got them through tough times. Strong is how they navigated spaces that required pioneering. Strong is how they lead their families as single mothers, grandmothers and aunts. In fact, my own research has shown that adopting some traits of the strong Black woman trope decreases Black women’s chances of reporting suicidal ideation. However, the events and policy changes of 2025 show us that the status quo is not sustainable.
Black women with low and no income are learning firsthand how fragile access to government benefits can be. They are heading families while battling anxieties tied to questions like, will SNAP be funded? Will my children’s school have funding for staffing and supplies? Will it be able to remain open without funding from the government? They have historically “made a way out of no way,” but with the toll of mounting stressors chipping away at their physical and mental health, a shift is their only option.
Interestingly, because the strong Black woman trope is not always tied to social class or financial status, Black women with multiple academic degrees are experiencing the anxieties of 2025 as well. This group of women generally gravitates toward the industries that have been cut, downsized, or eliminated altogether. Namely Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), health care, public health, education and social work. In fact, reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that over 300,000 Black women have been displaced since February 2025. CNN has called this period a “she-cession,” or recession that disproportionately impacts women, which I question as 67 percent of the 450,000 women displaced were Black, but only 15.5 percent of all women in the U.S. are Black. This means the current she-cession is more complex than a general women’s issue, it is a Black women’s issue, and that hundreds of thousands of breadwinners are now unable to provide for their families.
So, what is the way forward for strong Black women? We cannot dismiss it altogether as too many women have clung to this title and wear it with pride. But what we can do is redefine what strong women do and how they operate. Real strength lies in tapping into our vulnerability, humanity and the sense that we deserve care too. We can say that strong Black women ask for help, say no, take naps, have fun, seek (mental) health care when needed, allow their loved ones to hold them accountable and engage in self-care tactics that work for them.
We’ve carried enough, Black women, it’s time to carry ourselves.
Jeannette M. Wade, PhD, is the founding program director and associate professor of human health sciences whose work focuses on Black women’s health, representation in health care and community-based health equity interventions.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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