Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

We must collectively push back against any system that continues to disregard our divinity.

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.

A grieving person is a healed person.

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. I’m not grinding ever. I trust the Creator and my Ancestors to always make space for my gifts and talents without needing to work myself into exhaustion.

Silence and slowness have always inspired my practice as an artist. The role of the artist is to make new things and to resurrect. I am obsessed with community resurrection and individual resurrection. Wherever Spirit is, healing can happen. I’m inspired by invention and the opportunity to craft something new from scratch. I’m interested in remixing. I’m inspired by grief, mourning, and lament. I feel like these places are vulnerable and generative spaces for healing. These states of being must be protected. A reckoning must happen.

We must ask ourselves the following questions and more: 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”?

Rest must interrupt. Like hope, rest is disruptive, it allows space for us to envision new possibilities.

We must remain committed to building community and go into the deepest cracks to gather and care for anyone left behind. Treating each other and ourselves with care isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to thrive.

The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so. That is it! Rest in this proclamation for a moment.

the message of rest is to be truly for all and a full-on decolonizing moment, it must be life-altering and within our own communities, homes, workspaces, religious institutions, academic spaces, and, most importantly, in our minds.

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.

Rest keeps us tender and there is power in our tenderness and care. We will have to slow down enough to listen to what our hearts and bodies want to share with us. Our lives are a beautiful experiment in curiosity and creation. We can craft a life outside of toxic systems. Collective care, imagination, and rest are so vital to our liberation. Without them, we will not make it.

I call my daydreaming brain love.

There is massive knowledge and wisdom lying dormant in our exhausted and weary bodies and hearts.

Possessing extreme faith is a practice in living on the edge yet feeling tucked in and protected. Once you settle into it, you gain power from the feeling. You become magic. You can soar. You can dream.

You don’t have to grind, hustle, accept burnout as normal, and be in a constant state of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. You don’t have to kill yourself spiritually or physically to live a fruitful life.

Capitalism is new and our bodies are ancient.

What is your soul saying? Is your soul already resisting the terror of grind culture quietly and unconsciously? Is the idea of rest as a form of resistance appealing to you because it touches you in a way that is beyond comprehension? Have you had moments of observing the pace of your life and it didn’t feel true to your soul?

To resist means to soften into the powerful proposal of thriving right now.

Instead of fearing the unknown of what’s on the other side of slowing down, begin to see it as a sacred place that is ready to hold and make space for your gifts and inherent talents.

How do we craft a resistance that feels like home?

Rest is journaling so you can be a witness to your own inner knowing without the energy of others.

We cannot wait for the perfect space or opportunity to rest. Rest now. In Part One: Rest!, I share the need for seeing rest as not an extra treat that we must run to but more of a lifelong, consistent, and meticulous love practice. We must snatch rest.

Grind culture is violence. Resist participating in it. This must be flexible so please also resist the desire to become rigid. I have gone months consistently experimenting with a rest practice daily or weekly. The next week I am caught up in an all-nighter to finish a deadline. We are moving in and out of worlds all the time so give beautiful grace to yourself. Start again on rest. Keep going back to rest. Stay in the DreamSpace.

When we finally realize that a long checklist of to-do’s will not replace a deep understanding of our enough-ness, we will start the unlearning and unraveling process. You don’t have to always be creating, doing, and contributing to the world. Your birth grants you rest and leisure as well.

For me, my Sabbath is not a sabbatical because the latter assumes that it is granted by an outside entity for me to study, travel, write, or create. Creating a Sabbath is an opportunity for intense imagination work and collaboration with Spirit. We have the ability to imagine a Sabbath that is unique to us and only us. What a beautiful space of invention to listen to ways you can disconnect, even if it is for ten minutes, a weekend, thirty days, or as a gift to yourself for an anniversary or birthday. The intent of a Sabbath is to save us. The intent of rest is to save us.

Rest on a somatic level is a small resurrection. I have always been interested in the concept of community resurrection. We all may be familiar with resurrection only from a Christian perspective with Jesus rising from the dead on the third day. Outside of a Christian lens, I believe resurrection is a powerful idea for activism and disruption. A resurrection is a waking up into a new thing. It’s life, insight, breathing, refusing, thinking, and movement that is alive and made new. Rest is resurrection.

This is sacred community. This is the interconnectedness that is key to our liberation. When we stand in the gaps for each other and decide to be relentless in our support and witness, we can shift oppression. The beauty of this reality is that it repeats itself in many forms on our journey in life: at graduations and weddings. In classrooms and courtrooms, on protest marches and elevators, on battlefields and in gang territory, during childbirth and even in death. We are intimately tied to each other. We can find divinity and rest through each other.