Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

This book is a testimony and testament of my refusal to donate my body to a system that still owes a debt to my Ancestors for the theft of their labor and DreamSpace. I refuse to push my body to the brink of exhaustion and destruction. Let the chips fall where they may. I trust myself more than capitalism. Our refusal will make space for abundance.

like decolonizing, it will take enormous effort in the form of radical healing, change, redemption, and collective care.

All of culture is collaborating for us not to rest. I understand this deeply. We are sleep-deprived because the systems view us as machines, but bodies are not machines. Our bodies are a site of liberation. We are divine and our rest is divine.

Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. Both these toxic systems refuse to see the inherent divinity in human beings and have used bodies as a tool for production, evil, and destruction for centuries.

Rest is a meticulous love practice, and we will be unraveling from our sleep deprivation and socialization around rest for the remainder of our days. This is a blessing. Rest is radical because it disrupts the lie that we are not doing enough. It shouts: “No, that is a lie. I am enough. I am worthy now and always because I am here.” The Rest Is Resistance movement is a connection and a path back to our true nature.

Capitalism cannot have me. White supremacy cannot have me. Join me in reclaiming our DreamSpace. The time to rest is now.

I wish you rest today. I wish you a deep knowing that exhaustion is not a normal way of living. You are enough. You can rest. You must resist anything that doesn’t center your divinity as a human being. You are worthy of care.

Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism. It views our divine bodies as machines. Our worth is not connected to how much we produce.

Capitalism has cornered us in such a way that we only can comprehend two options. 1: Work at a machine level, from a disconnected and exhausted place, or 2: Make space for rest and space to connect with our highest selves while fearing how we will eat and live. This rigid binary, combined with the violent reality of poverty, keeps us in a place of sleep deprivation and constant hustling to survive. The work of liberation from these lies resides in our deprogramming and tapping into the power of rest and in our ability to be flexible and subversive.

We must collectively push back against any system that continues to disregard our divinity. To be colonized is to accept and buy into the lie of our worth being connected to how much we get done. Keep repeating to yourself: I am enough now.

Embrace knowing that you have been manipulated and scammed by a violent system as powerful evidence. Now with this knowledge you can grieve, repair, rest, and heal.

Resting is an embodied practice and a lifelong unraveling. It is not something that can be trendy, quick, or shallow. Resting is ancient, slow, and connected work that will take hold of you in ways that may be surprising.

Nothing we accomplish in life is totally free of the influence of spirit and community. We do nothing alone.

I am clearly stating that to center rest, naps, sleep, slowing down, and leisure in a capitalist, white supremacist, ableist, patriarchal world is to live as an outlier. A pilgrimage infused with softness, intentionality, and community care. We will not be able to interrupt the machine of grind culture alone. We need each other in more ways than we are allowed to believe. This work is about radical community care.

The “success” grind culture props up centers constant labor, material wealth, and overworking as a badge of honor. Resting is about the beginning process of undoing trauma so that we can thrive and evolve back to our natural state: a state of ease and rest.

Liberation and oppression cannot occupy the same space. It’s not possible.

Resting our bodies and minds is a form of reverence. When we honor our bodies via rest, we are connecting to the deepest parts of ourselves. We are freedom-making. What stories are we holding deep inside that are untold and uncovered because we are too exhausted? This rest work is holding space for our memories, our microhistories, and all the things that make us human.

You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out.

The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systematic lies of grind culture. Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly.

Exhaustion keeps us numb, keeps us zombie-like, and keeps us on their clock. Overworking and the trauma of burnout continues to degrade our divinity. Once we know and remember we are divine, we will not participate and allow anything into our hearts and minds that is not loving and caring. We would treat ourselves and each other like the tender and powerful beings we are.

White supremacy became a vehicle to poison the hearts and minds of an entire nation to view human beings as less than divine. Rest is resistance because it is a counternarrative to the script of capitalism and white supremacy for all people.

An experimentation in how to push a human body to a machine-level pace for centuries led by white people dizzy with hate and brainwashed by a system that trained them to look at a divine, human body as property to be owned.

My consciousness and Spirit will not allow me to align myself with a system that still owes a debt to my Ancestors. I personally find it disrespectful and of utter disregard to allow myself to be boldly and proudly grinding my body into a state of exhaustion. It stops with me.

capitalism calls for us to ignore our pain and health for the sake of being on the clock.

The legacy of brutality surrounding labor, sustenance, and survival for those enslaved on plantations and their descendants is striking and why I uplift sleep deprivation as a justice issue.

We must see our bodies as a miracle, and a place of reverence where existing in exhaustion is not normal or acceptable. The beauty of resting knows that we are blessed to have a body, to be chosen to be alive, to breathe, to make choices, and to proclaim that our bodies are our own, is a deep practice in care. It is the beginning of a revolution, radical, and a resistance.

If I have been consistently exposed and brainwashed by the violence of grind culture since birth, do I really know what rest feels like? Do I have a model or guide for what it feels like to be rested while living inside a capitalist system? What would it feel like to be consistently rested? What does exhaustion look like for me? Am I navigating the world from a constant state of exhaustion? Who was I before the terror of the toxic systems? Who do I want to be? What have you been told about your worth and existence? How do you make space to transcend the confines of a system that prays to the call of “profit over people”?

The Rest Is Resistance framework also does not believe in the toxic idea that we are resting to recharge and rejuvenate so we can be prepared to give more output to capitalism. What we have internalized as productivity has been informed by a capitalist, ableist, patriarchal system. Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor.

I don’t believe we will get to freedom from grind culture by doing more of the same and aligning ourselves with any corporate wellness message that does not get to the root of the issue. To not illuminate the systems making us unwell is to bypass the heart and soul of justice work.

The work is to first gain deep awareness that the pace at which this culture is functioning is not normal or sustainable. This understanding offers an invitation for the collective pilgrimage we are on as we attempt to disrupt and push back against a system that has no pause button.

I know that if I never check another item off my to-do list, I am still worthy and loved by God and my Ancestors.

Black liberation is a balm for all humanity and this message is for all those suffering from the ways of white supremacy and capitalism. Everyone on the planet, including the planet itself, is indeed suffering from these two systems.

Community care and a full communal unraveling is the ultimate goal for any justice work, because without this we will be left vulnerable to the lie of toxic individualism.

True liberation to me is to not be constantly attempting to prove our worth and ticking off to-do lists. To just be.

I keep hearing about the ways we exhaust ourselves to be seen as valuable and I am wondering when we will shift to see our inherent worth. When this happens, we will be closer to liberation.

Capitalism commodifies whatever it can and doesn’t allow space for us to experience the full spectrum of being human.

The idea of being trapped in the box of “the practical” must be suspended during your deprogramming. Grind culture thrives on us remaining in our heads, unable to allow the technology of our divine bodies to soar and develop. There is massive knowledge and wisdom lying dormant in our exhausted and weary bodies and hearts.

The stress, anxiety, overloaded curriculum, and pressure we normalize in public schools and higher education are toxic and dangerous for everyone involved, but particularly toxic for young children and young adults who are still developing a sense of self. They are exposed to the lie that their worth is determined by how much they can accomplish constantly and it’s reaffirmed and rewarded when they push their bodies to the limit to do well in classes. Many also begin to pour themselves into the life of perfectionism, which is a function of white supremacy. We internalize the toxic messages received from the culture and begin to hate ourselves unless we are accomplishing a task. We seek external validation from a violent system void of love. Dreaming and creating the space to dream is the remedy and cure.

this is about more than naps. It is about a deep journey toward decolonizing and returning to our natural state before the terror and the lies were given to us.

None of the way we are living under capitalism is normal. I want you to feel this in the widest parts of your heart. You are not unworthy. The systems are unworthy. Who were you before the terror of oppressive systems making you believe lies about yourself and about your fellow human beings? What have you been told about your worth and existence? How do you make space to transcend the confines of grind culture? How do we make space? How do we make a home? How do we build the world we want to live in? How can we be subversive and flexible? How do we craft a resistance that feels like home?

Hope is what will sustain us. Sleep will restore us. Peace of mind will elevate us to our highest form while spiritually protecting us from the invasion of the spiritual death that comes from sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and the trauma of burnout. We must collectively continuously stress the importance of an inner peace that comes from listening to your body’s need to rest and slow down. This is where our spiritual knowing resides and why we must resist anything that removes us from the listening.