The world is on fire: Is it okay to rest?

Prior to 2020, it never occurred to me—as a near-lifetime career activist—that one could simply be too overwhelmed to stay active in the work. I mean sure, life happens, but we simply must go on. Right?

After all, that had been my operating style for decades until 2020. 

When my mother died in the spring of 2004, I immediately returned to my graduate studies and working on my thesis, while also buying a more than 120-year-old house that required a significant amount of work. Then, six months after Mom’s death, my then-husband and I decided to have a child. Being the overachiever that I am, we only tried for a few weeks before hitting a home run. 

As a result, by the end of 2004 I had turned 31, lost my mom, dived headfirst back into graduate school, bought a home, and got pregnant. All while working my first interim executive director job and navigating a fledgling career as a writer. 

I spent the first years of my daughter’s life doing my best imitation of what the youngsters now call a tradwife. Back then, we called it natural living and attachment parenting. I cooked everything from scratch, nursed on demand for three years, carried my daughter everywhere, and launched a little side writing project on a blog that would eventually become this space that you are reading.

I was going a million miles a minute but couldn’t connect the dots between my almost daily panic attacks and chronic anxiety. Every day, I struggled to contain the racing thoughts, to the point that I carried a brown paper bag everywhere I went to breathe into when I needed to stifle the impending panic attacks.

It wasn’t until I was in an adjunct teaching gig when my daughter was 4—where a massive panic attack in front of my class led to me being carried out of the class by paramedics—that I was forced to face the reality that I needed to make some changes. 

I would eventually end up attending a yoga nidra class that would change my life, but it took six months of weekly attendance to see changes. Still, I would take on more than any one person should and could. 

When my daughter was 5, I became the executive director of a small youth development organization in Southern Maine that worked with at-risk youth, most of whom lived in poverty. We were a small and under-resourced organization and I was consumed by my work in a very unhealthy way. I loved the families we served and it never dawned on me how problematic it was that I was pouring so much time into that organization and mission that it was impacting my own family. Still, I kept going. 

Eventually leaving that position a decade ago, I came into my current position as executive director of Community Change Inc., which was stress on speed but—as an anti-racist—I am passionate about the work because it is personal to me. 

The thing is, I went through all of these situations at a time when the larger world was a little less of a shit-show than it currently is. I mean, yes, in 2004 when my mom died, The United States was hip-deep in war, Bush was president, and by 2008, the U.S. economy was absolutely in the trash. 

Honestly, in hindsight things weren’t great. The only difference between back then and now is that we weren’t constantly bombarded with the imagery of bad things in social media and we couldn’t get first-hand accounts from the folks directly impacted by the American war machine at the level we do now. 

So, it didn’t seem as bad as it was, but it was. I was working at a machine-like pace because that’s one of the ways that white supremacy culture is embedded in all of us. We think we have to keep going, when we really need to sit down and rest. My mother died two years after my relocation to Maine and my headspace was on “doing” instead of “being.” 

I would later learn in therapy that much of my nonstop action in the years after her death impacted my grieving process. It’s hard to grieve when you don’t make space or time for it, but grief will come out and it will be extra messy if you weren’t giving it the space it deserved before. 

Which is why, in 2020—when my personal world imploded alongside the external world exploding with a new virus, a pandemic, and then a moment of global racial tensions and uprising—I found myself unable to do anything but be. 

The week George Floyd was killed was the week that my father suffered the massive stroke that would lead to his death in June 2020. As a result, I was absolutely in a daze and almost oblivious to how big the George Floyd story was until I landed in Chicago to sign the paperwork to take my father off of life support. 

Given my work as an anti-racist writer and speaker, as well as the director of an anti-racism organization, to be so disconnected from what was going on in the streets was almost unfathomable. The thing was, after the hospital staff and I met via videoconference that allowed me to see my father—and in that moment of sitting on that call with my brother and son and realizing that Dad was pretty much gone—my brain and heart couldn’t hold anymore.

The nationwide protests were starting as I arrived in Chicago. It was chaos, and I really could not grasp how big it was because my world was in tatters. My beloved father was dying. While I would end up attending a few protests during my month-long vigil in Chicago, it was more a distraction from facing the pain of my father’s impending death. 

While my staff and board knew not to contact me unless it was truly an emergency, I still did get some calls, including press requests. 

I was running on fumes. My last parent was dying in the middle of a global pandemic, the country was ablaze, and all I could do was just try to stay focused. 

After Dad died and I returned home to Maine, I thought I would jump back into work, but I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed by life and my daughter, who had spent weeks in the hospital in January 2020, was still struggling. Everything was heavy and as much as I wanted to do more for the movement, it was all I could do to bang out my pieces for this site. Honestly, if my income wasn’t tied to writing, I probably wouldn’t have written anything. But Dad’s death was a costly affair, so I had to write. But it was a struggle. 

Sometimes we are too tired to be of use to anyone and, in middle age, I now know that sometimes the best thing we can do is rest. 

Lately, I hear people struggling with acknowledging guilt at being tired and not feeling they are doing enough for the Palestinians and others. The truth is, we are in deep denial about the collective trauma we experienced for the last several years with COVID. 

Shit, COVID is still an issue and as I write this, there are growing concerns about the bird flu as our next possible pandemic. 

I am a big fan of The Nap Ministry. For those unaware of The Nap Ministry, the premise is that rest is a revolutionary tool—especially for Black folks. Younger me would have scoffed at the notion of prioritizing rest as part of my movement but the truth is, I am far more efficient and focused when I am well-rested. I am less inclined to be anxious, stressed, or off-kilter when I am prioritizing rest. It means that I am better able to show up for myself and others. 

Rest isn’t strictly about sleep. It’s creating space to be present by giving yourself a break. When we prioritize taking care of ourselves, we are actively pushing back on the deep hold of white supremacy culture that tells us we must go 24/7. When we take care of ourselves, we can show up for others without the invisible baggage of stress and unwellness. When we are rested, we can step back and see reality and also be strategic in our organizing and movement work, which means we can have greater impact. Rested people can hold multiple truths and honor the humanity of all and not just some. 

The reality is that we are living in some dark and scary times. While social media pushes us to go with a sense of urgency, we need to be strategic in where we put our energy and also acknowledge that the human body and psyche can only hold so much. We cannot strive to fight for the humanity and dignity of Black people or LGBTQ+ people or the Palestinian people or anyone else while tearing ourselves and each other down. Looking at Israel and Gaza, even if a ceasefire were called right now, there will be so much work needed to regain a sense of normal for people who may never be able to fathom normal ever again. 

I fear at this moment that, like Black Lives Matter and other movements before, if we use the tactics of white supremacy culture and push on without pause or rest or considering our own health, we will only finish half the job at best. People want to disengage from the evils of white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism but too often the methods and mindset are straight out of the playbooks of this trio of evils. Dehumanizing tactics where ultimately the power-brokers are shifted but what is the real change? More so, is it even sustainable? 

If we can’t even honor our bodies’ and spirits’ need for rest, how are we creating a better way of being in the world? 

Yes, the world is on fire, but if you need to tap out and rest, take the rest you need and return to the movement. We need well-rested people who are committed, not frenetic, dazed people who will burn out and tap out for good. If anything, we should look at the social justice movements of the last two decades and learn how to do better.


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