Two weeks ago, I sent the email no woman CEO ever wants to find herself typing.
The subject line read: “On the verge of mental collapse, raising my hand to ask for help.”
I am the Managing Director of a boutique media company that creates content aimed at demystifying stereotypes about African women. For the last five years, I have been responsible—largely on my own—for financial monitoring and reporting, human resources, and the creative direction of the company. At the end of 2025, I was officially handed full executive control. On paper, nothing really changed. My job description and the company structure remained the same. In reality, everything did.
A few things happened in quick succession that altered my mental state and sent me into a quiet panic. The most immediate—and most terrifying—was the realization that I had misunderstood instructions from a funder during our recent implementation period. The consequences of that misunderstanding could have cost me, and possibly the company, a significant amount of money. Closely behind that came a heavier reckoning: I was truly on my own. The future of a team I had painstakingly built, nurtured, and protected now rested entirely in my hands.
At the same time, our funding runway was coming to an end. I had been handed a company with no real revenue-generating roadmap in place. And layered on top of all of that were my own internal expectations – excellence, competence, success – that I reflexively place on myself. Suddenly, I felt like I was drowning.
Fortunately, the company is governed by a board of directors. It was to this body that I sent the email admitting I was at the end of my rope. The responses were swift and compassionate. As expected, many of the suggestions offered were impractical or impossible to implement within the tight, time-bound constraints I was facing. Still, the act of naming my struggle mattered.
Being a woman in leadership comes with a host of biases. And while my company is 100% female-run and woman-owned, those biases don’t magically disappear. We carry them internally, often unconsciously. For decades, we have been told—subtly and explicitly—that we are “too emotional,” “not logical enough,” or simply not strong enough to handle the rigors of leadership. No number of Girlboss conferences or empowering think pieces fully erase that messaging. It lingers. It whispers doubt.
That doubt is why I pushed myself so hard to appear as though I didn’t need help.
Within my team, I earned the nickname “Mama Bear.” No matter the problem, I found a solution. I rarely lost my cool (though I am human, so never say never). I picked up slack that wasn’t mine to carry. I extended unusual grace to my team and to the vendors who support us. But in doing so, I took on tasks that were never meant to be mine. I spent hours of personal time—time meant for rest or family—doing work I should not have been doing at all.
That is what led to my near mental collapse.
One board member messaged me to say she was sorry she hadn’t been able to help more. I told her the truth: I hadn’t actually expected anyone to solve this particular problem for me. I simply felt it was important to say it out loud. Because if I had crashed and burned, the first question everyone would have asked was, “Why didn’t Malaka ask for help?”
At least this time, I hadn’t suffered in silence.
She replied that that was fair.
But here’s the good news: In the two weeks since I sent that email, a sense of peace has slowly settled over me. I have allowed the firms and individuals I hired to manage our finances to actually do their jobs. They are not responding as quickly as I would like, but they have assured me they are handling things. I have made the difficult internal decision to accept that this has to be enough. They understand deadlines – and the need to meet them – just as well as I do.
I have always been the kind of business owner—and student—who turns work in well ahead of deadlines. I love deadlines. I love the thrill of getting there first. It’s part of my competitive nature. But in this particular area, i.e. financial management, speed is not an asset. Meticulousness and accuracy are.
This is deeply counterintuitive for me, largely because of the trauma I experienced around mathematics as a child. Every Thursday morning at school, we were lined up in front of the class for mental maths. If you’ve never had to suffer the detrimental consequences of a round of mental maths, consider your childhood a charmed one. The rules were simple: The entire class would line up in front of the classroom where each of us was given an equation. You had to answer your equation with lightning speed or risk being whipped until you got it right in the next round. I was almost always one of the last two children left standing, being whipped repeatedly until the correct answer came.
I still struggle with math to this day because, in my body, numbers are associated with pain.
I am certain that this history contributed to my breakdown and the panic I felt at misunderstanding the instructions I was given. But the trauma itself is not the point of this story. The point is the bravery—and the deep discomfort—of asking for help. As a firstborn African woman. As a woman leader in business. As someone who has built an identity around being capable and dependable.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can say is: I am not okay.
And sometimes the strongest thing you can do is step back and trust the team you hired to do the work.
We are already deep into the first quarter of the year. If you are reading this and struggling, please hear this clearly: ask for help. There is no prize for drowning quietly. You do not have to suffer in silence. You are allowed to take a backseat. You are allowed to rest. And you are allowed to trust that you are not alone.