When a working mother falls asleep on live television, the internet can turn the moment into a joke before anyone asks what had to happen for her body to shut down in public. Dominique Dillon’s experience makes visible something many mothers manage privately: paid work, infant care, interrupted sleep and the pressure to perform normally anyway.

Black women are especially familiar with the expectation that exhaustion should remain invisible. We are praised for strength and then judged when the physical cost of that strength becomes visible. The “village” is often invoked as a cultural ideal while childcare, paid leave, predictable schedules and family support become harder to secure.

Sleep advice can be useful, but this is not only an individual time-management problem. A mother cannot optimize her way out of an overnight feeding schedule, a 2:30 a.m. work call time and a country without universal paid family leave. Structural exhaustion requires structural answers.

Rest should not be treated as a reward for finishing every responsibility. For caregivers, it is part of the infrastructure that makes every other responsibility possible.