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As the world fixates on global conflict, economic instability, and nonstop headlines, one thing remains consistent: the health and well-being of Black women continues to fall to the margins. April (stress awareness month) began with Megan Thee Stallion’s hospitalization. This tragedy isn’t an exception. It’s a pattern.

More than half of Black women report experiencing chronic stress, with disproportionate rates of hypertension, >vagrancy laws which criminalized unemployment. By forcing Black women to perform more work, with less familial support, we worked tirelessly to support the entire nation. 

Rest was treated as a threat. And so, Black women worked. Relentlessly. Not just to support themselves, but to sustain entire households, communities, economies, and countries. That legacy hasn’t disappeared. It has evolved.

Which is my main issue with the phrase “lock in.” Coined on social media, it reflects becoming hypervigilant on a task to produce a favorable outcome like more money and more recognition. 

Black women disproportionately represent those with higher education degrees, non profits, and entrepreneurs—all while juggling our other identities as friends, mothers, spouses, and caretakers. We’ve always been “locked in.” And it’s harmful. 

It’s no surprise I worked until the final days of my pregnancy. Teaching was already exhausting—physically and emotionally—but pregnancy intensified everything. Preparing for maternity leave didn’t mean slowing down; it meant locking in—taking on more work, submitting grades, writing detailed sub plans, attending last-minute meetings—all while continuing to show up fully for my students.

I kept going until my body forced me to stop.

I developed hypertension and had to be induced early to protect both myself and my daughter. My story isn’t unique. Black women are more likely to experience pregnancy complications like high blood pressure and preeclampsia—not just because of biology, but because of the cumulative stress of being expected to constantly perform and persist. Black mothers are also more likely to work up until childbirth, driven by economic necessity and inequitable parental leave.

But it’s not just working class Black women that have to betray their bodies to lock in. 

Cardi B’s opening lyrics on her new album”—“I had another baby, I was preeclamptic”—stuck with me. By folding a serious condition into her music, she reflects a culture that normalizes pushing through pain. In an interview with Gayle King, she described generations of women in her family working tirelessly, while preparing to return to tour less than three months after giving birth. The pressure—from labels, fans, and expectations—leaves little room for recovery, yet she’s praised for her discipline and ability to “lock in.”

The inability to heal after slavery is rooted in chattel slavery.  Black women were forced back into labor almost immediately after childbirth, often denied the ability to care for or even nurse their own children. Instead of allowing for breast feeding, these women watched their babies latch on to another woman’s breast, a forced separation because their bodies were not their own. Their need for rest was irrelevant.

After the Haitian Revolution, conditions for enslaved peoples drastically worsened. The Black Codes were instituted which in many places, effectively prevented Black people from even resting on Sunday. 

But the fear embedded in those systems was not unfounded. Rest creates space. And space  creates imagination. People who have time to rest begin to dream—and people who dream rarely dream of oppression.

In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey argues that oppressive systems rely on constant busyness, keeping marginalized people too occupied to question or imagine alternatives. She reminds us that rest isn’t a luxury or aesthetic—it’s a basic human right, essential for dreaming.

The truth is our rest won’t be found in spa days or girls trips. It’s found in the discipline of saying “no,” even when money or opportunity is on the line. I felt that tension myself when I delayed entry into a national fellowship because the time commitment left little room for me to simply be. I wasn’t looking to >starring on Broadway, opening her own Popeyes, the talent in Dunkin Donuts commercials, running her own philanthropy—all while attending NBA games courtside. But her hospitalization reveals something important: even “good stress” is still stress. “Locking in” creates stress on the body.

Megan Thee Stallion returned to the stage just two days after being hospitalized—“stronger, clearer, ready to give 100%.” But being everywhere, all the time, isn’t sustainable. She doesn’t need to lock in—she needs to put something down to protect her health.

You do too. Saying no often contradicts what we’ve been taught about our self-worth. But this April, break a generational curse. Prove to yourself that you are more than your productivity and you will not cause your body to be plagued by stress. 

Julienne Louis-Anderson is a mother and former educator who writes about the intersection of culture and politics with education and human development. She is also a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.

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