Privileged and marginalized people really seem to be having two totally different conversations when talking about burnout. And because we often internalize and center privileged people's experiences, it's also easy to assume that we're talking about those experiences constantly.

When I talk about burnout, I mean the experience of chronic, severe overwhelm, often brought on by trauma, oppression, and constant chronic crisis (crisis become ordinary). When understood this way, we can recognize that burnout is ALWAYS more common in all marginalized people.

But in witnessing and holding other community members' discussion of burnout, I think too many of us assume that burnout means "ability to rest and do self-care, with few to no consequences for taking a break or engaging in pleasure." That is something different.

The ability to rest or do self-care, with few to no consequences for doing so, is a *response* to some forms of burnout - and is a privilege available only to people with more privilege, resources, institutional support, societal support, etc.

Burnout is more common, more severe, and more emotionally catastrophic for people at the margins of the margins. Where living is about mere survival. The manifestation of burnout is different in each person. Many of us can never stop or take breaks - until we literally collapse.