My daughters once had a conversation about me that I wasn’t meant to hear.

They were in their room, curled up together, trading notes about all the things they believed I was. One said I was a “Pastor-Writer” —a phrase they’ve created to name the thing I do when I’m preaching from the pulpit one moment and typing away at my laptop the next. The other chimed in and added “Delta,” with the kind of pride that can only come from overhearing too many sorority calls and watching me step into my sisterhood with joy. Then, one of them said something that stopped me cold.

“She’s a superhero.”

I paused outside their door, listening.

“She can do everything,” she explained. “If we ask her for something, we know she’ll figure it out.”

I smiled at first, because what mother doesn’t want to be her child’s hero? But later, I sat with that sentence-She can do everything-and it started to unravel me. I knew what she meant. She meant I’m dependable. Creative. Capable. That I show up. That I come through.

But I also heard something else. I heard the seed of an expectation-that love looks like doing, and that strength means always saying yes. I heard the echo of every unholy agreement I’ve made with overfunctioning and overextending. And I wondered: What does it do to a child to watch their mother wear a cape she never asked for? What does it do to a woman to keep wearing it?

Every May, we take a collective breath and pause to say thank you to the mothers. We flood brunch spots, send flowers, and post tributes that rightfully honor the women who made us, shaped us, and carried us-sometimes literally and always metaphorically. We call them the backbone of our families, our communities, our churches. And they are.

But what happens when the backbone is tired?

As a Black woman, a mother of twin daughters, and someone who lives in the tension between pride and exhaustion, I want to both honor and challenge the phrase “backbone of the community.” Because what we celebrate as strength, we rarely interrogate as burden. What we exalt as resilience, we often ignore as weariness. And what we name as legacy may also be a load.

We have always been the backbone.

This is not new. Our foremothers have held the line for generations. Black women in particular have been praised- and too often, expected—to do the work that others won’t. To hold broken systems together. To stretch thin resources into miracles. To raise children, keep faith, bury loved ones, and keep going.

In our families, we are often the ones holding history and hope in the same hand. We know how to navigate silence and shout. We can fry chicken, braid hair, balance checkbooks, quote

Scripture, file court papers, lead meetings, and teach Sunday School—all before noon. And yet, for all our brilliance and ingenuity, the cost is rarely calculated

We have always been the backbone.

But should we always be?

Somewhere along the way, being the backbone became not just our role but our identity. And that’s where it gets complicated. Because when the world keeps telling you that your highest calling