April carries a double charge for Black communities: Minority Health Month and Stress Awareness Month — two observances that, held together, tell an honest story about what it costs to be Black in America. The health disparities are well-documented. Less examined is the chronic, compounding stress that drives them, and what it looks like for Black leaders doing this work every day to sustain themselves.
Chrissy M. Thornton is one of those leaders. As President and CEO of Associated Black Charities (ABC), Baltimore’s premier philanthropic organization dedicated to racial equity, Thornton is up at 4:30 a.m., keeps six to ten meetings on a moderate day, and attends corporate boardrooms and grassroots community gatherings with equal commitment. She stepped into the role in 2023, following a predecessor who had led the organization for over sixteen years, and made a deliberate choice: visibility would be the path forward.
“I knew it would be a period of sacrifice,” she said. What sustains her through it is not stamina alone — it is purpose. Her calling was forged early, growing up in New York during the era of Howard Beach, Yusef Hawkins, and the Central Park Five, then navigating high school in the mid-Hudson Valley, where she was one of fewer than 40 students of color among 1,600. Those years, she says, made amplifying marginalized voices an imperative, not a career.
“I do believe I’m walking in my God-given calling,” Thornton said. “When it gets rough, it grounds me in my belief that I’m here for such a time as this.” Before arriving at ABC, she spent nearly a decade with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and led regional work for several national health organizations. In every role, the pattern was the same: Black people were not getting equitable outcomes. Today, that fight is her daily work.
But Thornton is candid about what purpose alone cannot do. Asked directly about self-care, she paused: “I honestly don’t do enough.” Her pushback, though, is not against wellness — it is against the prescription of it. “I need to do what brings me and my soul peace,” she said. For her, that means sewing, baking, binge-watching television, and finishing the work so it isn’t cycling through her mind during her off hours. This year she added monthly massages — a scheduled act of body awareness she calls transformative.
She also shared something many Black women will recognize. For nearly eight months last year, she felt profoundly unwell — weight gain, brain fog, low energy — all while showing up fully for her work. It took a peer conversation, not a doctor’s visit, to identify perimenopause. “In our communities, we don’t talk about all of the things,” she said. Once she sought support, the shift was swift. “It brought me back to who I was.” The lesson she wants women to carry: “When something’s wrong, seek support — because it could be something you don’t have to struggle through.”
And then there is the word she returns to again and again. “Gratitude drives me,” Thornton said. “I was grateful before I got to ABC. I was grateful in every place God put me on the pathway to get here.” Her mother’s words, offered when she accepted this role, stay close: “The same way you go up will be the same way you come down.” So, she meets each morning — even the hard ones — with thankfulness, she calls her truest fuel.
As we move through these awareness months, Thornton’s story offers more than inspiration. It offers permission to define your own rest, to seek answers when your body speaks, and to remember that purpose, honestly tended, is its own kind of medicine.
Michelle Petties is a TEDx speaker, Food Story coach, and award-winning memoirist. After gaining and losing 700 pounds, Michelle discovered the secret to overcoming stress and emotional overeating. Her free workbook, Mind Over Meals, reveals her core principles for losing weight and keeping it off.
