When Did You Last Refresh Yourself? A letter to the woman holding everything together

Dear Sister,

I want to ask you something, and I need you to sit with it before you answer.

When was the last time you did something, not for your children, not for your husband, not for your organisation, not for your community but purely, quietly, just for you?

Take your time.

I thought so.

I know you. Not by name, but by the weight you carry. You wake before everyone else and sleep after everyone else. You remember the school fees and the medication and the meeting and the birthday and the deadline all at once, in your head, without a list, without a reminder, because you are the reminder.

You are the infrastructure nobody notices until something breaks. And you have learned to perform fine.

I am fine.

You say it so often it has stopped meaning anything.

You say it in the morning when you are tired.

You say it at work when you are overwhelmed. You say it to your mother, your friends, your pastor, your husband, co-founders and even workers because if you stop saying it, you are afraid of what comes out instead.

Something like a cry from the depth of you.

Here is what I want to tell you today, woman to woman, with no performance between us; The issues that are holding you down are real.

The load is not in your imagination. The exhaustion is not weakness. The fact that you are doing the work of three people and being thanked for none of it, that is real.

The man who left, or stayed but checked out. The career that was quietly handed to someone less qualified and less burdened. The dreams you shelved at twenty-five because someone else's needs were louder. The body you stopped inhabiting because there was simply no time to notice it.

The grief you never processed because grieving felt like a luxury you couldn't afford. These things happened. They are still happening. I am not going to tell you that they didn't, or that a long bath and a scented candle will fix them.

But here is what I am also going to tell you: You cannot pour from a vessel that has never been refilled.

And somewhere along the way, sister, you stopped refilling.

I want you to picture a woman. She walks into a room. stiff, guarded, holding herself together by sheer will. Someone asks her a single question.

Not how are you, the real question. When did you last feel like yourself?

When did you last feel like a woman?

And she breaks. Not politely.

Not a dignified tear.

From somewhere deep, the kind of cry that has been waiting for years for someone to ask the right question. When she finally lifts her head, she looks around.

And she says: the room looks brighter.

That is not magic.

That is what happens when a woman finally puts down what she has been carrying long enough to breathe. Just breathe. Not fix. Not plan. Not perform. Just be in her own body, in her own life, for one unguarded moment.

She said later it was the softest she had ever felt. Not the strongest. Not the most productive. The softest. And somehow that was the thing she had needed most.

So let me ask you again, and this time I want a real answer: "When was the last time you refreshed yourself"?

Not recovered. Not survived the week. Not got through it. "Refreshed"— like water on skin that has been in the sun too long.

Like sleep that you actually woke up from rested.

Like laughter that came from the belly, not the throat.

Like sitting still long enough to remember that you actually like who you are.

Here is what I know about the women on this platform.

I read your stories.

I see what you are carrying.

You are building movements with no budget.

You are raising children in systems that were not designed for you.

You are navigating workplaces that reward your output and ignore your humanity.

You are holding your families together through grief and debt and distance and disappointment.

You are showing up.

God, you are always showing up — even when nobody is showing up for you.

And still, somehow, you are here.

Still writing. Still speaking. Still reaching for something better. That is not ordinary. That is extraordinary. But extraordinary women still need rest. Still need softness. Still need someone to say: "you are allowed to stop, just for a moment".

Not forever.

Just now.

I am not going to pretend that the systemic barriers will dissolve if you take a walk in the evening. They won't. The world still needs to change. The fight is still necessary.

But the woman who leads that fight, the woman who raises that next generation, who builds that organisation, who writes that story, who changes that community, she needs to be alive inside herself, not just functional on the outside.

So today, I want to invite you to do one thing.

Not a list.

One thing.

Ask yourself the question she was asked. Sit with the answer honestly. And then, without guilt and without explanation to anyone, do one small thing that refills you. Not tomorrow.

Today. Because the movement needs you.

But first, "you need you"

With love and solidarity,

A woman who is still learning this too❤️🤍🩷💜💖💝