Joe's Reviews > Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

My introduction to Tricia Hersey is Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. Published in 2022, this came to my attention via Carmen with her excellent recent review. I'd been watching YouTube videos in which women chronicle their experiences living in their cars and without referring to Hersey or the Nap Ministry, one of the Black "car lifers" presented Hersey's thesis: rest is a form of resistance against the machine-level pace of our culture and a key to surviving poverty, exhaustion, white supremacy and capitalism with our body and mind intact.

-- When I started resting to save my life and connect with my Ancestors, I was a poor, Black, queer woman in graduate school on student loans with thousands of dollars in debt. I had been unemployed and underemployed since I was a full-time student worker in an archive library on campus barely making $12 an hour for a few hours weekly. I was also working for free as part of an internship for my studies while taking a full load of classes and caring for a six-year-old child. I am and was a first-generation adult graduate student with a child and a husband who was working fifty-plus hours a week to pay our rent while I studied. Once I finished my program, I couldn't find work in my field even after going on countless interviews. I remember sitting on my side of my bed crying because I had negative $25 in my bank account, no car and no savings. This is not a movement created by a person speaking about rest from some sort of position of privilege outside of being traumatized from capitalism and white supremacy. I'm telling you it's possible because I am the poster child and witness. Rest saved my life.

-- I watched my father get up every morning at four a.m. He would drag himself out of bed to sit at the kitchen table to read three newspapers, study his Bible and pray silently. He would do this for almost two hours before he needed to leave for work at six. I remember asking, "Why do you get up so early when you don't have to be at work until later?" He replied, "I want to have a few moments in the day that belong to just me before I clock in."

-- Resting can look like:

1. Closing your eyes for ten minutes.
2. A longer shower in silence.
3. Meditating on the couch for twenty minutes.
4. Daydreaming by staring out of a window.
5. Sipping warm tea before bed in the dark.
6. Slow dancing with yourself to slow music.
7. Experiencing a Sound Bath or other sound healing.
8. A Sun Salutation.
9. A twenty-minute timed nap.
10. Praying.
11. Crafting a small altar for your home.
12. A long, warm bath.
13. Taking regular breaks from social media.
14. Not immediately responding to texts and emails.
15. Deep listening to a full music album.
16. A meditative walk in nature.
17. Knitting, crocheting, sewing, and quilting.
18. Playing a musical instrument.
19. Deep eye contact.
20. Laughing intensely.

-- The concept of filling up your cup first, so you can have enough in it to pour to others feel off balance. It reeks of capitalist language that is now a part of our daily mantras. Language like "I will sleep when I am dead," "Rise and grind," "While they sleep, I grind," "If it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense," "Wake up and hustle," and many more. The cup metaphor also is most often geared toward women, who, because of patriarchy and sexism, carry the burden of labor. Marginalized women, specifically Black and Latina women, make up the largest group of laborers in a capitalist system. Our labor history historically has been used to make the lives of white women less hectic and more relaxed. So when I hear and see this "filling your cup" language repeated on memes on social media and in the larger wellness community, I realize that our view of rest is still burdened with the lies of grind culture. I propose that the cups all be broken into little pieces, and we replace pouring with resting and connecting with our bodies in a way that is centered on experimentation and repair. I don't want to pour anymore.

One of Hersey's contributions is being an advocate for rest. Everywhere we turn, there are apostles for productivity: growing faster, advancing further, earning more, boosting your numbers. Slowing down, taking a breather, or daydreaming are practically heretical. The very thought of quitting seems hateful to most westerners. It makes me wonder who's benefiting from these narratives. Not people who are content with what they have. I was relieved to find reinforcement here that I'm already doing a few things on Hersey's list: taking long showers, a half hour nap after lunch on workdays and taking a walk when I get home.

Hersey includes a few personal anecdotes and I would've liked much more of that. Most of this manifesto is repetitive, with words like "grind culture," "side hustle," "white supremacy" or "capitalism" repeated over and over and over. I would've preferred a book that included interviews with social scientists, teachers, caregivers and others discussing how they burned out, how they benefited from rest and what that looked like for them. This manifesto is a good starting point, but my recommendation is to put your $13 toward rest and instead of buying this ebook, search Tricia Hersey on Google or YouTube.