If we're being real, for a long time I thought doing all of it myself was the whole point. The fund. The incubator. The nonprofit. The trivia night. The community programs. Every one of those things had my fingerprints on every single piece, and I wore that like a badge.

This summer I hit a wall. Not a dramatic one, no breakdown, no big scene. Just tired in the way that doesn't go away with a nap or a long weekend. The kind of tired that's actually information, if you're willing to listen to it.

So I listened. I stepped back from the day-to-day on a couple of things I built, and handed the wheel to people who were always going to be a better daily hand on it than I was. I cut something else outright instead of pretending a plan existed just to avoid a hard conversation. I told my team the truth about where my capacity actually was, instead of nodding through another commitment I had no business making.

None of that changed the vision. I still hold the relationships that matter. I still show up where only I can show up. What changed is I stopped confusing "I built this" with "I have to be the one hand on every piece of it forever."

Let me be clear, because this isn't a soft "self-care" post. I don't believe capitalism or hustle culture will save any of us (and for far too long afterwards I thought otherwise). But I do believe Black women build wealth and institutions from a full cup, not an empty one, and pretending otherwise is how you end up resenting the very thing you built to set your people free.

So this month, I want to talk about capacity. Yours, not just mine. Because I know a lot of you reading this are founders and operators carrying six things that should be four, and calling it commitment when it's actually just fear of letting go.

You wanna fly, you got to give up the weight. I'm still figuring out which pieces are weight and which pieces are wings. But I'm finally asking the question, out loud, instead of just carrying everything and calling it strength.