Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

Your body is a site of liberation. It doesn’t belong to capitalism. Love your body. Rest your body. Move your body. Hold your body.

“Every shut eye ain’t sleep. I am resting my eyes and listening for what God wants to tell me.”

This is imagination work. A portal opens when we slow down. You can rest.

Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism.

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.

The desperate and valid question of “How can I rest, if I have to pay bills?” is the beating heart of this work. It is evidence of the trauma endured by the hands of grind culture and evidence of our need to reimagine rest.

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.

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

We falsely believe hard work guarantees success in a capitalist system. I have been told this constantly for as long as I can remember. On nights when I worked two jobs, still unable to pay my bills on time or save, I continued to tell myself, “Burn the midnight oil, keep working hard, go to college, find a third job and a side hustle.”

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.

I don’t belong to the systems. They cannot have me. I will never donate my body to a system that views it as only a tool for its production.

Grind culture has normalized pushing our bodies to the brink of destruction. We proudly proclaim showing up to work or an event despite an injury, sickness, or mental break. We are praised and rewarded for ignoring our body’s need for rest, care, and repair. The cycle of grinding like a machine continues and becomes internalized as the only way.

Rest is a portal. Silence is a pillow. Sabbath our lifeline. Pausing our compass. Go get your healing. Be disruptive. Push back. Slow down. Take a nap.

We have been bamboozled and led astray by a culture without a pause button. We are barely surviving from our sleep deprivation, worker exploitation, and exhaustion. We must rest.

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.

The work is to first gain deep awareness that the pace at which this culture is functioning is not normal or sustainable.

Silence is a sound.

We are resting not to do more and to come back stronger and more productive for a capitalist system.