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.

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

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

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 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.”

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.

Capitalism was created on plantations. The roots of it are violence and theft.

To be colonized is to accept and buy into the lie of our worth being connected to how much we get done.

The “success” grind culture props up centers constant labor, material wealth, and overworking as a badge of honor.

“Rest makes us more human. It brings us back to our human-ness.” To be more human. To be connected to who and what we truly are is at the heart of our rest movement. Since the beginning of developing The Nap Ministry, I have repeated, “This is about more than naps,” over and over again.

Grieving in this culture is not done and is seen as a waste of time because grieving is a powerful place of reverence and liberation. A grieving person is a healed person. Can

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.

When we don’t take our own rest while holding space for others around us to rest, we are functioning like the systems we want to gain freedom from. I battle and navigate this daily as I engage with corporations, institutions, and individuals constantly ignoring my workflow boundaries, requesting work from me even while on an announced sabbatical, and requesting my labor for free. I am amazed at how many well-meaning people interested in this work aggressively push and micromanage our interactions. Because grind culture is a curriculum that has been forced on us and reinforced through corporate and academic culture, it is always present.