In fall of 2024, I sat down with Washington, D.C.’s own Christine Platt as she wrapped the manuscript for her upcoming book, Less is Liberation: Finding Freedom From A Life of Overwhelm. We shared a few conversations while the trees beyond my window changed hues and shed their leaves to brace for winter.

I first encountered Christine six years ago as Instagram’s ever-stylish, non-conforming Afrominimalist. I was one of thousands captivated by her colourful slant on mindful living. I quickly snatched up The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less and soon discovered that the bold woman in her signature red jumpsuit possessed more wisdom and intellect than nearly every lifestyle writer on the web. 

“Renaissance woman” is the quickest way to sum up her shimmering titles: environmental advocate, award-winning multi-genre author, TED speaker, mature model, celebrated historian, community activist—the list goes on. She has dedicated her entire career to social justice, whether on the page or in person. She is a warm and caring mother, a generous mentor, a thoughtful friend. The woman lives with purpose, on purpose. 

In true Christine fashion, she dialed in for our video calls dressed from the inside out, unapologetically herself, first barefaced in refined pyjamas and then in a multicolour statement dress from one of her favourite designers. Our laid-back conversations skipped happily between low-key hilarity, hard-won wisdom, and recent epiphanies. 

How do we let go of that which has come to define us? What does it take to heal and be whole? What is the road to personal liberation? Her clear and confident responses hung in the air long after our call and challenged me to see my own future in a promising light. I hope they challenge you too.

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Elissa: Christine, I feel like you have lived a dozen lifetimes in your 48 years. Before we talk Less is Liberation, let’s go back to the beginning. Can you share a bit about your early days?

Christine: Absolutely. I was born and raised in an enclave of West Palm Beach, Florida, known as Pleasant City. It’s a former Black settlement town. Despite the area being impoverished, it was such a happy place. I had no idea we were poor.

Before turning forty, my favourite age was seven. I have such fond memories of spending my formative years in Pleasant City. I loved the outdoors—riding my bike, climbing trees, catching lizards, swimming under the Singer Island bridge, just being truly wild and free. I love that tomboy version of me so much! I recall my mother picking me up from childcare and telling me I smelled like a truck driver, probably hoping it would shame me. But I remember being so proud! [laughs]

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Girl, I loved turning forty. I feel like that’s when I became a person. It’s like I came to a silent agreement with my whole self, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life.

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E: So the joy of turning forty eclipsed those early Florida days? Tell me more.

C: Girl, I loved turning forty. I feel like that’s when I became a person. It’s like I came to a silent agreement with my whole self, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life. What a blessing to be able to grow older. I can’t wait for this hair to go silver. I love telling anyone who will listen how I cannot wait to be a silver fox.

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E: Ha! I love it. Christine, your origin story is one of a kind. Can you share a bit for those who are unfamiliar?

C: How much time have you got? [laughs] In a sentence? I’d say the throughline in my journey is my love for the history, beauty, and complexities of the African diaspora. That is the touchstone on all fronts, from my books to my advocacy work—even my minimalism journey.

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E: I love that you literally started writing a new life for yourself in your thirties. I wish we had time to discuss your literary portfolio and origin story but I’d like to cut to the Afrominimalist chapter. How exactly did you go from DC lawyer to internet darling? 

C: When I was working in environmental law, I became increasingly aware of my carbon footprint. I saw how my lifestyle had a major ripple effect. I always felt slightly overwhelmed about the stuff I had accumulated—you know, storing it, caring for it—but it was only when I started taking inventory that my situation became intense. I saw my overconsumption with clear eyes. When I started to feel the weight of my stuff, the need to change became almost urgent. You know, you find out how many gallons of water it takes to make one pair of jeans and then you’re standing in your closet looking at fifty pairs but you keep wearing the same two? The gravity hit me. My lifestyle was contributing to other people’s oppression. I had never considered that as a consumer. 

My daughter and I downsized to a 635-ft condo. I began documenting my journey on Instagram as @theafrominimalist and, you know, things resonated.
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E: They absolutely did! I love how you embodied minimalism on your terms. But you didn’t want to document your lifestyle forever, right? When you walked away, did you think it was the end of an era?

C: Oh, I walked away absolutely thinking it was over. I had allowed myself to become so overwhelmed, you know? In retrospect, I waited too long to call it off. It’s funny now, though, because I see how much of my Afrominimalist work fed into my new book, Less is Liberation: Finding Freedom From a Life of Overwhelm. People have been asking me, “How long have you been working on this book?” I’m like, “Technically, a few months but in reality….maybe the past five years? Maybe my whole life?” [laughs]

I’d just wanted to document my journey, maybe inspire some people to see minimalism as something more than some white-on-white aesthetic. I didn’t anticipate the project taking over my life.

The overwhelm from The Afrominimalist’s Guide did me in. It was the perfect storm. I signed the book deal. Covid struck. Everyone was at home staring at their stuff. Everyone’s online. Suddenly people everywhere wanted to talk to me about it. All day, if I was not on Instagram Live, I was on a podcast. I’d just wanted to document my journey, maybe inspire some people to see minimalism as something more than some white-on-white aesthetic. I didn’t anticipate the project taking over my life. None of my other book launches were that intense.

In the end, I started to resent the work. I remember walking around DC, you know, and people would spot me and call out, “Oh my God! You’re the Afrominimalist!!” I’m like, “No. My name is Christine.” The project had become my identity. 

At some point, I think we all wake up in a place we never intended to be. It’s a universal situation, right? Whether it’s a job, or a relationship, or something else.

At some point, I think we all wake up in a place we never intended to be. It’s a universal situation, right? Whether it’s a job, or a relationship, or something else. It’s a draining, all-encompassing experience. But what do you do? It’s lucrative, you have a network, you land great opportunities. Suddenly you’re stuck, you know?

We must experience loss if we want to grow, if we want to experience real freedom. Letting go of just being known–as only being known–as the Afrominimalist was a necessary loss. It was an act of liberation.

The only way to completely let go and move on was to lose my social media handle but, girl. Do you know how hard it is to change a handle once you’ve been verified?! I almost lost my damn mind. I still don’t know how my team did it. I was afraid I’d lose my entire audience but I had to reclaim myself. If it meant losing my social media platform, so be it. We must experience loss if we want to grow, if we want to experience real freedom. Letting go of just being known–as only being known–as the Afrominimalist was a necessary loss. It was an act of liberation.

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E: So you walked away from life as an overwhelmed influencer. What happened next?

C: I napped! [laughs]

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Overwhelm had become my baseline. That’s the world we live in. So many of us don’t even realize we’re unwell. I’ve come to see that overwhelm is a sign, a symptom of being unwell. Our bodies are actively trying to get better. My body was screaming for sleep. When our bodies speak, we need to listen.

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E: Look at you, lady of leisure! 

C: Ha! Not really. My body was trying to tell me something. I mean, there were days when I could hardly get out of bed. I finally got in touch with how overwhelmed I was. Like, physically, I was out. I ended up being diagnosed with Stage 2 hypertension. I had no idea. Overwhelm had become my baseline. That’s the world we live in. So many of us don’t even realize we’re unwell. I’ve come to see that overwhelm is a sign, a symptom of being unwell. Our bodies are actively trying to get better. My body was screaming for sleep. When our bodies speak, we need to listen. That’s a big component of my new book.

While writing Less is Liberation, my integrative health doctor actually taught me about the five pillars of wellness: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual, or what people may regard as their higher calling, their purpose. I began to visualize these pillars as actual wells. Because if one is depleted, medically we are deemed unwell. In my book, I talk about how we can fill our wells through practices like honouring solitude, stillness, and selfishness—the right definitions.

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E: Ha! What do you mean?

C: When writing the book, I revisited the proper definitions of several words we use often, words like “overwhelm” and “wellness”. I also did a study on the word “selfish.” First definition? The one you hear all the time. You know, basically, you’re a jerk. 

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So much of the overwhelm we experience, the constant work and lack of rest, is rooted in holding on to an incomplete or faulty definition of selfishness. Sometimes we just need to be concerned chiefly with caring for ourselves, freeing ourselves to be well.

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E: Of course.

C: The second definition though. Girl. I guarantee you’ve never heard it. “Being chiefly concerned with one’s own profit or pleasure.” Phew! That’s it. Being chiefly concerned.

“Selfish” is a word I genuinely struggled with. I think a lot of women do. We need to reframe our understanding of selfishness. So much of the overwhelm we experience, the constant work and lack of rest, is rooted in holding on to an incomplete or faulty definition of selfishness. Sometimes we just need to be concerned chiefly with caring for ourselves, freeing ourselves to be well.
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E: We can't discuss freedom without considering what keeps us captive. What are some of the cages you've encountered in your lifetime? 

C: That's a great question. We rarely think about the cages we've broken out of, right? We tend to think only about the cages we're in at the moment. There's power in considering the cages we’ve liberated ourselves from. It reminds us of our power. 

Case in point: This room I’m in? It was my daughter’s space until last weekend. When she left for college four years ago, I thought I was ready for the empty nester thing. I said, “Baby, what can I do with your room?” She told me, “Anything you want but please keep my bed.” So I held onto it.

Her room turned into one of those in-house storage lockers. Stuff everywhere, you know, like “Oh my God, if anything happens to me and people see this is how the Afrominimalist really lives, it’s game over.” [laughs] 

Like, here is this beautiful room, full of potential, and 90% of the space belongs to that damn bed. And it reminds me every day that my daughter is gone. 

Motherhood is its own type of cage, you know? It is one we choose and it’s one we love—at least most of the time—but still, at times, it feels like a cage. Last weekend I realized that I've really been struggling with being an empty nester. Like, I miss my girl a lot. I was keeping the bed for her but she is rarely home and I was stuck. 

The last time she returned from college, she asked me to drive her back to campus after a day and half. I get it. She’s 21. I thought to myself, I do not need this bed in my life. I asked if I could finally ditch it. She gave me her blessing.

So I called my friend and said, “Girl, I am just so mad. I’m behind on so many things. The world is on fire. I just want to do something productive with all my rage. I think today is the day I’m turning Nalah’s bedroom into my home office.” I challenged my friend, Rena, to pick a problematic room to work on too. I called it a rage room challenge. 

Listen, I do not put furniture together and I do not take it apart. This IKEA bed had, like, five thousand pieces that my ex-husband-turned-dear friend rigged together. Taking the thing apart was awful at first but then I started gaining momentum. I felt this surge of empowerment doing it on my own, you know?

But I could not get the bed out of the room until the whole thing came apart. I finally got down to the last two screws. I don’t know if they were stripped or what but they were not moving. They would not budge. Girl, I was furious. I was kicking the pieces with everything I had, you know. Just stomping. I borrowed a hammer from my neighbour and started swinging and BAM. I promise you, it was the most cathartic release of rage I have ever experienced. 

The next day, I called Rena. I said, “Do you know what? I said I was changing the room to release rage, right? That was my initial purpose,” I said. “But it unlocked something in me. I feel so empowered, so invincible, so ready for whatever this next phase of my life is.” Talk about liberation. I freed myself from the cage I’d been in for twenty-one years and stepped into a new chapter. The bed had been holding me back from embracing empty nesting all along.

The experience served as a reminder to my body, my mind, my soul. It’s like I heard this voice that said “We have done this before, right Christine? You have felt trapped before. You have allowed yourself to be caged, to not fully utilize your space of intellect or power, to not show up fully. But we've broken out before. And look, girl, you can still do it.” I'm really proud of myself. 

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E: What a powerful picture. Well done.

C: Thank you.

E: I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the relationship between individual freedom and collective freedom. Your new book speaks to the individual.
It's helping people assess their lives and see how they can become liberated and well. In your opinion, what's the relationship between that personal liberation and collective freedom? 

C: You know, we tend to talk about collective liberation without discussing the individual journeys and decisions people have to make. 
Historically, freedom has always been a very individual journey, right? 

We have never seen collective liberation in our lifetime. We don't really know what that looks like. 
We’ve seen pivotal moments where a sliver of collective liberation takes place, where a number of individuals unite for the same cause, the same purpose, the same reason. But liberation is still an individual decision you have to make. If we consider the example of Harriet Tubman, you know, she’s saying “I can't help you get free if I don't know the route to freedom first. And you can't get free until you realize that you are actually in a cage.” Right? It might not be a barbaric cage. It could be a really pretty cage, really comfy, really easy. But it’s still a cage, right? 

We’ve seen pivotal moments where a sliver of collective liberation takes place, where a number of individuals unite for the same cause, the same purpose, the same reason. But liberation is still an individual decision you have to make.

We haven’t seen collective liberation yet, but I will speak for Black folks — we have a blueprint for generational liberation and it is so beautiful to witness this freedom. Every generation is more free than the one before. When my friends and I say things like, “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” I realize their dreams weren't just to be free. Their dreams were, “I want you to imagine and live a life that I didn't even know was possible.”

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We have to see our parents, our partners, our friends as whole people, which means we have to see them in their messiness. They need to see our process of getting free. We need to see ourselves in the mess, too. Much of getting free is practicing self-compassion.

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E: Your daughter is one lucky girl. Seriously, what a gift you've given her. 


C: She’s seen me through the process. There is beauty in the work. We have to see our parents, our partners, our friends as whole people, which means we have to see them in their messiness. They need to see our process of getting free. 

We need to see ourselves in the mess, too. Much of getting free is practicing self-compassion. In The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less, the four steps I outlined were: acknowledge we have too much, forgive ourselves, let go, and pay it forward. 

Getting free is almost like going through your closet, right? We torment ourselves. It’s like, “What kind of person owns all these jeans?” [laughs] You have to do the inner work and you have to have so much compassion for yourself. 
You have to say, “Man, I was such a people pleaser. Why did I do that for so long?” 

Why did I let my daughter’s room stay stagnant for four years? I could have had that freedom sooner, right? When you set out to get free, you have to reflect on the past. You’re bound to feel disappointed and angry. You have to have compassion for yourself. 
We cannot change the past. We have to let it go.

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E: Absolutely. What would you say to the person who's white-knuckling something in their life right now? Something they know needs to go and they're terrified to let it go? 

C: All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable, right? Pause. Ask yourself honestly, “What is truly depleting my time and energy?” We have to be willing to self-assess. We have to be willing to hold ourselves accountable. What lesson or blessing am I delaying by refusing to let go? As long as I’m living with a closed fist, I cannot receive that lesson or blessing. I have to open my hand. Now it is available to me. Now I’m free.
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E: What would you say to those of us experiencing new levels of overwhelm in these crazy days?

C: If you want to be free from overwhelm, the real key is self-mastery. You have to learn how to manage your emotions. You have to learn how to manage your time, your energy. There's no one-size-fits-all formula. 

I would encourage people to do a self-assessment and ask themselves the following. “What are the ways that I find myself overwhelmed? When do I find myself overwhelmed? Why do I find myself overwhelmed? Are these things within or outside of my control? Is this a habit?” 

A lot of what we experience as overwhelm is comprised of limiting habits, behaviours, and beliefs. And then, when we figure out what the limiting belief is and how it contributes to the behaviour, we ask “Where did this belief come from?” There's so much self-work, right? And it's the work that people really don't want to do. They want a magic formula. [laughs]

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Freedom is what it's always been. Putting one foot in front of the other, leaving the old life behind. There are seasons where we take multiple steps, where it looks like we're running, and there are seasons where we’ve got our heads down and then we look up like, “Wow, I only took one step?!” But those are often the really big steps. And all those individual steps lead to personal freedom.

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E: If only it were that easy, right? Ugh. [laughs] How do you plan on exercising freedom in the years ahead, Christine? 

C: I feel like it's just one step at a time, you know? Keeping my wells full, continuing to break out of cages. Like on Sunday? Breaking the bed? That was one step, right? Freedom is what it's always been. Putting one foot in front of the other, leaving the old life behind. There are seasons where we take multiple steps, where it looks like we're running, and there are seasons where we’ve got our heads down and then we look up like, “Wow, I only took one step?!” But those are often the really big steps. And all those individual steps lead to personal freedom. 

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E: Christine, one of the things I admire about you is that you are not afraid to embody life on both sides of the continuum. Like, you show up barefaced in your pjs and then you show up in a killer dress. You write with deep expertise and wisdom and then you write from a place of inquiry, of not knowing. You acknowledge where you are and make peace with it. You let the hard stuff go and pay it forward. I love people who can walk in that freedom. I cannot wait to read your next book.

C: Thank you. When I first began my writing career, I never imagined I’d foray into the lifestyle and wellness spaces. But it has been so powerful to see how chronicling my journey to living with less, first, tackling overconsumption and now, overwhelm, has helped touch and change so many lives. In seasons like the one I’m in, I am always reminded of a mantra I share at the end of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less: “I am not a grown woman, I am a growing woman. And may we always be growing and never fully grown.”