If You’re Carrying Too Much: A Message for Minority and LGBTQ+ Folks Who Feel Worn Down
If you’re reading this because something in you is tired, deeply, bone-level tired, I want to speak to you directly. Not as a clinician performing “suicide awareness,” but as someone who understands how heavy life can feel when you’re navigating systems that weren’t built for your safety.
You don’t have to pretend you’re okay here.
You don’t have to be “strong.”
You don’t have to minimize what you’re carrying.
You’re not imagining it. The world has been harder on you.
The Weight of Marginalization and Minority Stress
If you’re Black, Indigenous, a person of color, queer, trans, nonbinary, or living at the intersections of multiple identities, you’ve been asked to survive conditions that would break anyone.
You’ve been asked to:
translate yourself in rooms where people don’t understand you
swallow microaggressions that cut deeper than anyone realizes
navigate family rejection or conditional acceptance
fight for your identity in political climates that debate your right to exist
carry grief, anger, and fear without a place to put it
None of that is “normal stress.” It’s erosion. And erosion changes people.
When Suicidal Thoughts Feel Like an Escape
If you’ve had moments where disappearing feels easier than staying, you’re not alone.
Suicidal thoughts don’t make you weak. They don’t make you dramatic. They don’t make you broken.
They’re a signal—a sign that something in your life has become too heavy, too isolating, too painful to carry alone.
And you don’t have to carry it alone.
You Deserve Affirming Mental Health Care
You deserve safety. You deserve connection. You deserve rest.
You deserve a space where you don’t have to explain your identity, defend your existence, or shrink yourself to be palatable.
You deserve care that sees the whole of you—your culture, your community, your identity, your trauma, your brilliance, your exhaustion.
You deserve a clinician who understands that suicidality is often a response to oppression, not a personal failure.
If You’re Struggling Right Now
If you’re struggling right now, here are a few things I want you to hold onto:
You are not a burden.
You are not “too much.”
You are not failing.
You are responding to conditions that would overwhelm anyone.
You deserve help that honors your lived reality.
If you’re feeling unsafe, please reach out to someone you trust—a friend, a family member, a clinician, or a crisis support line. You don’t have to navigate this moment alone.
You Don’t Have to Translate Yourself in Therapy
And if you want a therapeutic space that understands the complexity of your identity and your pain, my practice is here. You don’t have to translate yourself. You don’t have to perform resilience. You can just show up.