Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

I trust myself more than capitalism. Our refusal will make space for abundance. We will have to leap and trust rest. May the ground underneath hold us, and if we must collapse, may a soft pillow be there.

Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive. We must rest.

Our bodies are a tool agent for change. A site of liberation. Our bodies know.

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.

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.

Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us.

The more we think of rest as a luxury, the more we buy into the systematic lies of grind culture.

We need to unlearn grind culture

Get up today and tomorrow and think to yourself: “When and where can I find a moment of rest?”

We believe that our healing can visit us while we are napping. While we are resting. While we are sleeping. While we are slowing down. We believe that naps provide a dream and visioning space To invent To create To heal. To imagine This is what resistance looks like.

Release the shame you feel when resting. It does not belong to you.

Sleep deprivation is a public health issue and a racial justice issue.

Unlike white feminism, womanism holds space for race, class, and gender and understands the family and community of a Black woman are collaborators in the struggle for liberation.

“Not all evil can be overcome in this world, and yet a postmodern womanist theology maintains hope in the struggle to creatively and constructively respond to it.

A postmodern womanist theology strives for tangible representations of the good. The good includes justice, equality, discipleship, quality of life, acceptance and inclusion.”

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 are not resting to be productive.

We are not resting because we are online for hours and hours a day, distracted and exhausted. This is why we must view rest as the ultimate disruption of capitalism’s tricks and plans.

What if we simply saw our birth and living and breathing and connection with ourselves and our families as enough?

Start a daily practice in daydreaming.

Understand exhaustion is not productive. You are not resting to gain energy to be more productive and to do more.

We must uncover, simplify, and let go of our addiction to busyness.

You are not on the run since you don’t belong to the systems.

Rest has never failed us. Dreaming will never fail us.

We can’t simply talk about the hopes of a world centered in justice while we continue to exhaust ourselves and each other and remain in allegiance with grind culture.

This connection work is about restoring, remembering, reimagining, reclaiming, reparations, and redemption.

We are moving through life exhausted, disconnected, and out of touch from who we are, where we come from, and the implications of this today.

Engaging with rest to build the world I want to see. I want to see a rested world that is deeply connected to our divinity and not to the violence of capitalism and white supremacy.

I believe we don’t belong to these systems. I am guided with evidence from my own family and Ancestors.

Read poetry before you nap or write rest meditations to yourself.

I’m interested in always honoring and referring to my Ancestors, because my resting is in reverence to them.

Imagine what it would feel like, taste like, and smell like to believe you don’t have to prove who you are by your accomplishments and labor.

What story are you telling yourself? What is a more liberating story you can tell?

Our entire culture is addicted to social media and technology. This is leading us down the path to exhaustion. If you are not very intentional about detoxing regularly from it, I believe deep and connected rest will be impossible.

The intent of a Sabbath is to save us. The intent of rest is to save us.

Our bodies are ancient and the way to heal ourselves is ancient. Rest is ancient. This is a moment for deeper imagination work that will lead us into the deepest parts of ourselves.

Afrofuturism.

To transport Black people away from the violence and racism of planet Earth to the creation of a Black planet. His artistic reaction to the trauma of Black life in the United States brings deep joy, hope, and expansiveness, even if just in our dreams. Black people are given the space to see beyond, above, and around their current place in a violent society.

They spoke of a planet where you didn’t need to go to public school and learn things for a test and instead you were born with all the knowledge you would need to thrive.

This offering allowed me to understand that it is possible to feel soft and held in a world that feels hard and cold.

I am grateful to not be realistic and for the legacy of imagination and trickster energy shown to me by my Ancestors. I am grateful that Harriet Tubman was unrealistic when she decided to walk to freedom, guided by the stars, her intuition, and God.

Do less, watch how I thrive.

Community care will save us. It is already saving us.