After a year full of chaos, noise, and nonstop doing, what we truly need isn’t more effort, it’s rest. This season invites us to slow down, release what we’re carrying, and finally give our bodies and minds the break they’ve been begging for.

Black women don’t enter the holiday season from a place of ease. We enter it carrying emotional, generational, cultural, and professional labor the world depends on, but rarely acknowledges. And after a year where hundreds of thousands of Black women were pushed out of the workforce, dismissed, overlooked, and expected to “push through,” our Christmas lists look very different from what’s sold in a gift guide. This year, I’m naming what Black women really want: rest, softness, protection, dignity, and joy that doesn’t require suffering.