Let me tell you what brunch actually is.
It is not eggs Benedict. It is not the mimosa, although the mimosa is absolutely doing its part. It is not even the playlist, though if nobody two-steps by the second hour, we have notes.
Brunch is a portal. Two, maybe three hours where the weight gets set down at the door and we walk in as just ourselves. Not somebody’s mother. Not somebody’s employee. Not the strong one. Not the one holding everything together. Just us, in the cute shoes, on the good plates, loud and unbothered and full.
We need it. More than people understand.
The Weight We Carry To The Table
Black women live in a particular kind of exhaustion that does not have a clean name. It is not just tired. It is the accumulation of managing everyone else’s emotions while quietly burying your own. It is loving children who drain you and parents who need you and partners who sometimes take more than they give. It is code-switching all week at a job that will never fully see you. It is watching the news and knowing that the news is about you, your people, your future — and still having to show up functional the next morning.
That is not stress. That is chronic grief that sits in the body and collects interest.
So when we say we are going to brunch, what we are actually saying is: I am choosing myself for the next three hours. And nobody is taking that from me.
What Actually Happens At The Table
We did our research. Don’t get it twisted. We are not pulling up to some random spot with mediocre hollandaise and a cash-only policy. We read every review. We checked the Instagram. We confirmed the vibe. Because when Black women invest in joy, we are intentional about it.
We show up dressed. Not just dressed. Dressed. The fit was planned. The shoes were chosen with intention. The earrings are saying something. We walk in and we expect our reservation to be ready because we did not come to stand by the door.
Then we sit down and something shifts.
The laughter is loud. The tea gets spilled and somebody is crying laughing before the appetizers land. The food hits — the syrups, the sauces, the sheer decadence of a meal that exists purely for pleasure. If it is a Black-owned spot and the DJ is doing his job, someone is out of their seat. And for a minute the whole world shrinks down to this table, these women, this moment.
That is joy. Not the concept of it. The actual, physical, in-your-body experience of it.
Why This Matters More Than It Looks
Our ancestors did not get this. That is not hyperbole. That is history.
Black women who were enslaved could not choose when they ate or what was on the plate or who sat across from them. They could not dress for pleasure. They could not gather freely and call it theirs. They could not laugh loudly without consequence.
Every time we pull up to brunch in a city we chose to live in, wearing what we want, eating what we want, surrounded by women we love — we are living something they could only dream about. That is not a small thing. That is enormous.
Joy, for us, is not a luxury. It is lineage.
The Part Nobody Says Out Loud
Finding joy as a Black woman is work. Not because we are not joyful people — we are some of the most joyful people on this earth. But because the world does not stop taxing us long enough for joy to arrive on its own. We have to go get it. We have to protect it. We have to be as deliberate about it as we are about everything else we have ever had to build for ourselves.
Brunch is one ritual. Your ritual might look different. A solo trip. A night in with no notifications. A walk somewhere beautiful with nobody asking you for anything. The form does not matter. The commitment to it does.
Because joy is not the reward at the end of the work.
Joy is part of the work.
We are living in our ancestors’ wildest dreams.
Every table we claim, every laugh we let loose, every moment we choose ourselves without apology — that is the proof that surviving was worth something.
Claim it like you know it belongs to you. Now go ahead and schedule that brunch, gurl.
