26 BLACK WOMEN
The Weight of Being the Emotional Caretaker
ACHEA REDD
Achea was four years old when she heard her parents arguing over a few dollars for dish soap. She followed her mother upstairs, heard her father coming, and watched from the doorway as the argument turned physical. When her father saw Achea standing there, he let her mother go and left.
Achea immediately dropped to her knees beside her crying mother and comforted her. No one turned to the four-year-old who had just witnessed what happened. Achea remembers that as the moment she learned two things: her presence could help stop the danger, and her mother needed her to protect her. Caretaker, fixer, emotional handyman, emotional janitor. Those roles started there.
LISTEN TO ACHEA’S STORY
“I had to give up having someone to care for me.”
WHEN CARETAKING BECAME THE DEFAULT
The day after Achea comforted her mother, there was no conversation about what she had witnessed. No one stopped to ask what the four-year-old had seen, what she felt, or what she needed. That silence became part of the lesson too. Other people’s emotions required attention. Hers could wait.
As she got older, the pattern repeated itself. Achea became the one who noticed what was wrong, anticipated what might happen next, and stepped in before things fell apart. She described living in a state of hypervigilance, always scanning for risk and figuring out how to minimize the pain before it arrived.
Being the emotional caretaker meant she was constantly wrapping her arms around other people while rarely experiencing that same kind of care in return. Over time, carrying everyone else became so familiar that exhaustion felt almost built into the role.
WHEN SHE FINALLY ASKED, “WHAT ABOUT ME?”
For years, Achea’s attention had been trained outward. Who needed something? Who was upset? What needed to be fixed before it became worse? Even when she was exhausted, the question was usually about everybody else.
That began to change when Achea made the decision to step away from her family of origin. As people asked what that decision would mean for her mother, her father, and everyone around them, Achea heard the same pattern again: concern for everybody except her. This time, she answered it differently.
She asked, “What about me?”
Achea described that period as the beginning of separating herself from responsibilities and expectations that had been placed on her for years. The farther she got from that family dynamic, the more internal quiet she began to experience, and the more she could tell the difference between what she actually believed about herself and what she had absorbed from other people.
“I started divorcing the role
that I never auditioned for.”
WHEN HER BODY SHOWED HER THE WEIGHT
Achea had spent years carrying other people emotionally, but one morning in hot yoga, that weight became physical. She was holding Warrior II, a pose that was normally easy for her, when the tops of her shoulders began to burn. There was nothing in her hands, but her arms felt as if they were holding gallons of water.
Achea asked Spirit what was happening, and the answer came quietly: her body was being allowed to feel what her spirit and soul had been feeling for years. She understood immediately. The exhaustion in her shoulders was not just about the pose. It reflected a lifetime of holding, fixing, protecting, and carrying.
Then came another message. Putting something down did not mean she no longer loved the people connected to it. She could stop carrying what was hurting her and still hold love in her heart. Months later, when her family relationships shifted, that moment on the mat would mean even more.
“Just because you put it down doesn’t mean that they are far from your heart. Because two things can be true.”
WHEN RELIEF AND GRIEF EXISTED TOGETHER
After Achea began stepping away from the roles and relationships that had kept her carrying so much, she expected some relief. What surprised her was how much grief came with it too.
She could feel lighter and still miss people. She could know a relationship was unhealthy for her and still mourn what she wished it had been. Achea began making room for both truths instead of forcing herself to choose one or the other.
For her, that became part of what she calls “finding her gray.” Life no longer had to be reduced to all good or all bad, love or distance, staying or leaving. She could detach from the chaos something brought into her life while still recognizing what it had taught her and what she carried forward from it.
“You can have the lightness and the relief of letting something go and the grief of no longer having that attachment anymore.”
CHOOSING HERSELF WITHOUT STOPPING THE LOVE
Achea is still learning what it feels like to be truly heard. For her, being heard means having room to tell the truth about her own experience without someone rushing in to fix it, correct her language, or reinterpret what she lived. The people who make her feel most supported are the ones who can sit with what she says and let it belong to her.
That awareness has changed how she moves through relationships. Achea is more intentional now about where she gives her energy, which relationships are important enough to have deeper conversations in, and whether she actually has the capacity to respond when someone needs something from her. She no longer treats every request as something that automatically requires an immediate yes.
Choosing herself has not meant becoming unavailable to the people she loves. It has meant learning how to love them without abandoning herself in the process. Achea described it as waiting until she’s resourced enough to give, maintaining her boundaries, and making sure she is giving from something fuller than depletion.
“I can love everybody
and love me at the same time.”
ABOUT ACHEA REDD
Achea Redd is a mental health advocate, author, speaker, and life coach whose work grew out of her own healing journey. After struggling to find spaces where Black women were speaking openly about therapy, mental health, and the impact of religious upbringing, she began sharing her own experiences and building the kind of community she had been looking for. That work eventually led to multiple books and to Rooted With Redd, her coaching practice for women who want to live more authentically and reconnect with who they have always been.
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