Resistant Rest

This topic has been forefront in my mind since I first encountered Tricia Hersey’s power-packed book Rest is Resistance through her 2022 interview on We Can Do Hard Things, and I thought this Labor Day would be an appropriate time to finally put my own reflections on this powerful and countercultural truth into my own words. And while this reflection has now extended almost two weeks beyond the holiday, it seems appropriate that the delay of finalizing this post was guided by listening to and honoring my body’s cues.

Let me begin by sharing a brief reflection on the history of Labor Day, a holiday that was first celebrated in New York City in 1882 during the Second Industrial Revolution to celebrate the efforts of American workers during a time when “the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living”, often facing “extremely unsafe working conditions with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities, and breaks” (History.com). Reflecting on this history from where we are now—thanks to the efforts of countless union organizers and members in the 139 years since that first Labor Day—a single day of celebration seems an insufficient and even insulting exchange for life-draining labor the celebrated workers performed and the treatment of their bodies as machines the other 364 days of the year, and yet even that was resisted by the federal government until the holiday was signed into law 12 years after its conception. I can’t say for certain that the Industrial Revolution was the birthplace of the treatment of human bodies as mere vessels of productivity, but it certainly seems to have created a prime environment for the outlook to be widely adopted, even by the workers themselves, a very fortunate convenience for those who manage and benefit from laboring bodies and a tragically detrimental thorn in the side of the metaphorical ‘cogs in the wheel’ of American capitalism.

Growing up as the daughter of a Vietnam-War-veteran-turned-city-bus-driver dad and a stay-at-home-mom-turned-retail-worker/caregiver mom, I learned from direct observation what exhaustion and burnout looked like and the havoc that being over-worked and under-rested could—and would—do to one’s physical and mental health. I had a front row seat to my father’s mental and physical decline with limited financial and emotional resources with which to dig himself out. I didn’t know until decades later how deeply the fear of burnout affected me until it actually happened and I had to learn to let go of the expectations of productivity I had internalized as validations for my right to exist. For decades, I subscribed to the idea of academic performance as an escape route from poverty—which I had assumed to be the ultimate cause of burnout, but as I interacted with and befriended peers and professors from more financially secure backgrounds, I observed that wealth was in fact not a prevention for burnout but merely a safety cushion for rebounding from it. The reality is that we are all—unless we very intentionally choose otherwise—operating within a cultural framework that equates productivity with personal value, treats bodies as machines, writes off anyone who can’t (or won’t) keep up, and benefits (at least superficially) a very small percentage of individuals at the expense of almost everyone else. In the words of a quote (origin unclear) that so intensely captures my internalized childhood fear of poverty: “If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” We are existentially tired and, in the woefully truthful summation of Father Greg Boyle (in a recent conversation with Bishop William Barber on Stacey Abram’s podcast Assembly Required about how we got to the point where we see others as more or less important than ourselves) “unwell”. And in our state of exhaustion and desperation for relief, we’ve bought the lie that our neighbors—our fellow 'cogs' and 'menu items'—are to blame and/or, in cases of extreme desperation, that their dismissal would provide the relief we’re looking for.

The good news is, though, that we don’t have to accept the ‘dinner invitation’; we can, in the wise metaphorical words of Sonya Renee Taylor (in her book The Body is Not an Apology, which If first heard her speak enlighteningly about on a September 2020 episode of Brené Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us) “get off the ladder” that we’ve been convinced we have to climb in order to survive, and stop allowing ourselves to step on others as a path of ascension. To do this, we MUST—first and foremost—honor and listen to our bodies. As Elise Loehnen recently shared in a powerful discussion on Tori Dunlap’s Financial Feminist about the importance of embodiment to achieving financial security and success, the only way to resist any oppressive system that would have us submit our energy and attention without question “is by being fully in your body”… “if you’re not in your body, someone else is.”

Learning to listen to and trust my body has been a slow process as I’ve unraveled lies I was taught and modeled about what my body signals meant and what I should do with them. I learned by word and example from my childhood religious community that my body was not to be trusted and should be overridden by the expectation to constantly put others above myself, but I now know that, as the children’s singer-songwriter Mama Nous shared: “Any religion that requires obedience over your own knowing is a dangerous weapon”, most significantly, I would add, against one’s own well-being. The truth is that our bodies are our greatest gift, our control centers with all sorts of miraculous signals and indicators to inform us about how what’s going on outside the body relates to our internal experience, to inform us what we need and to direct us toward safety. Martha Beck articulates in the recently published ‘guidebook’ by the powerhouse trio from the podcast of the same name, We Can Do Hard Things: “The single sign that we’ve lost ourselves is suffering. It’s so simple, and it’s a gift. It’s an ally.” Martha goes on to elaborate that when we’re trapped in a belief/behavior cycle of denying our bodies, our bodies relentlessly conspire to keep us aware: “My body tells me what I need to do --> I deny myself what I need --> My self-abandonment leads to self-sabotage --> My self-sabotage leads to suffering"..."self-sabotage is the truth trying to get you out of the cultural matrix to which you ceded your freedom.”

It took me years to wake up to the capitalistic system our society operates under and the place that it would have me and my family members assume, but now that I’m aware, I’m also responsible for making different choices, a fact that is far easier acknowledged than acted upon. Last winter, the acknowledgement and acceptance of that responsibility led me to leave a teaching job that was ‘on paper’ a position I had dreamed of landing and yet proved to require far more from me than my already-exhausted self could give, an unfortunate truth made evident through weekly meltdowns and frightening cardiac episodes. While it was difficult and painful to decide to leave a job—and potentially a profession—that didn’t allow me to take care of myself in exchange for an hourly position completely outside of my field of study, my time is now valued (literally), I am supported at an institution that takes good care of its employees, and—for the first time in my life—I am doing work that feels both energetically and financially sustainable, work that provides me bandwidth to both take care of myself and apply my creative energy to my personal projects (like this blog).

If you find yourself exhausted from the daily grind on the hamster wheel of productivity, know that listening to and honoring your body doesn’t have to look like quitting your job (like I did) or clearing out hours a day to nap or meditate (as one might think when reading/hearing the term “rest is resistance”). The resistant rest Tricia promotes is not another all-or-nothing demand for perfectionistic performance but rather a life-long practice that starts where you are and requires self-compassion for the continuous process unlearning the well-engrained denial of one’s own body. You can start by simply checking in with your body and noticing your fatigue, then progress to allowing yourself the time to take a short nap or simply close your eyes and breathe deeply (maybe while listening to some music, like one of the minute-long improvisations by Dan Wilson compiled on his recently-released album goodnight, los angeles or the track on Sleeping At Last’s Atlas: Enneagram album that’s written for your Enneagram number… which you can find out here if you don’t know!), and gradually work toward developing awareness and bravery to say “no” to things that are voluntary and drain your energy and to say “yes” to the things that fill your cup in the order that your body wisely prompts you to do them. Whatever it ends up looking like for you, let this be your permission slip to take a pause, listen to your body, and to let yourself rest.

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Food for Thought:

• What’s a simple way you can honor your body’s signals today and allow yourself rest? (If you have no idea, see the next two questions to prompt some personalized examples.)
  

• What’s something that would feel “too good to be true”, that when you do it, you immediately feel selfish (a “guilty pleasure”)?* *This question was asked by Rob Bell on The RobCast Episode 384 about taking the best care of ourselves, particularly because the fatiguing toll that the time we’re in can have on us only creates and recreates despair.

• What/who do you resent for ‘having it good’? Oftentimes, our envy is an indicator of something we’re lacking (and need to be responsible for giving ourselves).

Mood for Thought:

"my body is my home" by mama nous, a singer-songwriter whose work is focused on social-emotional awareness and skill-development for children (of all ages)

👇 Scroll below the video for lyrics

my body is a good body and it's the only one i'll ever know so i treat it like a friend because my body is my home my body's like a butterfly it wasn't made to stay the same it's gonna change, change, change in a thousand ways with every passing day my body is a good body my body is my home it's gonna change, change, change in a thousand ways but it'll always be my home