Black professional women are exhausted. They’re finally claiming the time to rest.

“We live in a culture that values productivity, so we’re measured by that capacity to produce,” Peoples said. “But for Black people, that idea goes even deeper because our [enslaved] ancestors were literally valued based on their capacity to produce labor. Not working up to capacity could mean beatings, or you could be sold off and separated from your family. So it was dangerous to rest, and we’ve had that encoded into our DNA.”