I’m going to tell you something that might surprise you, given what I do for a living.
Slowing down does not come naturally to me.
I teach self-compassion. I lead intimate wellness retreats for Black professionals and other high-achieving women of color. These spaces are intentionally designed as luxury retreats for Black women and restorative retreats for women of color. I design spaces rooted in rest and restoration practices, where women are invited to recalibrate their pace and reconnect with themselves. I talk constantly about the costs of urgency culture and the importance of slowing down with intention.
And still…still… I feel the pull.
The whisper that says I should be doing more, moving faster, responding quicker. The familiar hum of urgency that has been my companion for as long as I can remember.
If you’re a high-achieving woman, and especially a Black woman navigating leadership, responsibility, and visibility, I suspect you know this hum intimately. It’s the thing that helped you succeed. And it’s also the thing that quietly erodes your capacity to stay well.
What Urgency Is Really Costing Us
Research on urgency culture is finally naming what so many of us have lived for years: when workplaces operate in constant urgency, burnout, illness, and chronic stress follow. For Black women and other women of color, the impact is even more pronounced. The expectation to be endlessly competent, emotionally available, and always on creates a relentless pace that leaves little room for rest.
When your nervous system has learned that slowing down equals falling behind, rest feels risky. Reflection feels indulgent. And the speed that once felt like proof of your value becomes the very thing that steals your clarity.
This isn’t a time-management problem. It’s a systemic one.
We are operating inside environments that mistake velocity for value, while our bodies quietly absorb the cost. Speed without intention becomes expensive chaos — mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
When we’re always in motion, we start making decisions from depletion instead of discernment. We say yes when our bodies are saying no. We chase opportunities that drain us because we no longer have access to the inner spaciousness that helps us feel what truly fits. Over time, urgency disconnects us from our own wisdom — the very wisdom that made us effective in the first place.
This is why communal care wellness, rest, and restoration practices matter so deeply. Healing urgency isn’t just an individual task. It requires environments that support a different rhythm.
My Ongoing Practice (Not My Mastery)
I want to be clear: I’m not writing this as someone who has conquered urgency. I’m writing as someone who wrestles with it, and who has learned that wrestling counts.
One of the ways I work with this tension is through a practice I’ve held for several years, rooted in rest and restoration practices — I take a sabbatical every January.
Not a few days off. Not a working vacation. A full month away from client sessions, speaking engagements, meetings, and the daily demands of running my businesses.
Here’s the part I don’t always share: the way I make this possible is by telling everyone.
Starting in the fall, I begin naming my January sabbatical to clients, collaborators, colleagues, friends, and family. I weave it into conversations. I include it in emails. I bring it up during planning meetings.
On the surface, it looks like consideration, and it is. But it’s also deeply self-protective.
Each time I say it out loud, I create accountability. I give my intention witnesses. I build a structure that’s harder to dismantle when the pull of urgency gets louder, because my nervous system still reads slowing down as dangerous. And if I relied only on willpower, I would find plenty of reasons to abandon rest.
So I don’t rely on willpower, but practice, structure, and community rooted in care.
Big Rhythms and Small Boundaries
The January sabbatical is a visible, seasonal practice. But urgency also has to be interrupted in smaller, everyday ways, or it finds its way back in.
One boundary I hold is simple: no meetings before 10 a.m.
It’s not flashy. And it has quietly transformed how I show up.
Those morning hours aren’t always productive in the traditional sense. Sometimes I move my body. Sometimes I journal. Sometimes I sit with my coffee and let my thoughts settle. What matters isn’t how the time is used, but that the time belongs to me first.
This is self-compassion for high-achieving women in practice — especially those navigating leadership, visibility, and constant demand. Small, consistent choices that tell your nervous system you are safe enough to slow down. That your worth isn’t measured by speed.
These moments become mindfulness and rest spaces woven into daily life. Soft places to land instead of something we have to earn.
Why I Have to Live What I Teach
My work invites women into deeply restorative experiences — restorative luxury retreats for Black women that prioritize rest, reflection, and recalibration through culturally attuned wellness spaces. These are intimate gatherings designed so pace is intentional and care is shared.
I cannot offer that work with integrity if I’m not also practicing it.
Not perfectly. Not effortlessly. But consistently and out loud.
The living is the practice. Choosing, again and again, “to interrupt urgency is the work.”
The Invitation
I don’t know what your version of rest looks like.
Maybe it’s a month away. Maybe it’s a week. Maybe it’s one protected morning each week where the world doesn’t have access to you until you’ve had access to yourself.
What I do know is this: the leaders who are thriving aren’t the ones moving fastest. They’re the ones who have built structures that support rest and restoration. Not just intentions, but practices.
For Black women and women of color navigating systems that demand constant performance, this often means finding the right spaces — intimate wellness retreats, communal care wellness containers, and mindfulness and rest spaces that feel like a soft space to return to yourself. Spaces that understand both your drive and your exhaustion.
As Ngozi Cadmus wrote, “When Black women choose rest, the world shifts.”
I’ve seen this shift, in retreat spaces, in therapy rooms, in leadership teams, and in families. When one woman slows down enough to lead from wholeness, the impact ripples outward.
So here’s my invitation: what’s one structure, big or small, you could build that interrupts your urgency?
Start there. And know, the wrestling counts.
If you’re ready for a deeply restorative, culturally attuned wellness retreat, centered for Black & Brown women, I’d love to welcome you into the Compassion Collective.
