Emerging from a 3 week Sabbath and one of the things solidified for me is people truly don't want you to rest. There is no model for folks to understand a Black woman taking 3 weeks off to just be. I was asked everyday to do some sort of labor.

My email inbox had an intensive vacation responder on it with links to articles about Juneteenth and tips on how to rest. Also I specified that I was on break to grieve and heal from the trauma of COVID-19 and deaths of George Floyd and others.

Folks read the responder and still emailed immediately back. They would say, "I see you are on Sabbath, but I still wanna ask and say this." We are so caught up in capitalism and grind culture that its become a habit that is deep in our bones.

This is why rest is a resistance. Resistance is hard and goes against all of the norm. If you center rest and slowing down in this culture, you are an outlier and charting a new frontier. Rest is a protest.