Rest, Joy, and Liberation
Making your sabbatical a reality
We arrived at the soft-sand beach with our extended family, everyone sweating and carrying bags with tortillas, pots with guisados, towels, and fruit. We found a side of the beach where big rocks and trees would provide shade for the elders through the hot, sunny day. Then I was free. We kids would jump under an open sky in clear shallow water to explore, splash, learn to swim, laugh, and be loved by the ocean until the sun started to set.
I started working when I was eight. I grew up facing the hardships of poverty in the outskirts of la ciudad de Oaxaca. I come from lineages of Indigenous families. My parents were pushed to migrate to the city at a young age. Due to the brutal impacts of colonization and caste systems in Mexico, as an Indigenous person, having to do hard physical labor and be a hard worker has often become tied to survival, redemption, dignity, and identity.
As children, we were not taught how to rest. We were expected to be busy with chores and work. We had a break from the city when we visited my grandma Toya on the coast of Oaxaca. My connection to the ocean was born there and continued to become strong, deep, and loving. Rest to me often feels like the joy of jumping into the water and floating on the ocean, being caressed by her waves.
In the summer of 2023, I took a forty-day sabbatical that opened up the recalling of the teachings the water and the land have given me about rest, joy, and liberation.
Rest
At Collective Liberation in Practice, we have been experimenting with short periods of rest and retreat over the last two years. This experience helped me to decide to take my first sabbatical. I also had the privilege of being a coach for leaders of color through the BIPOC ED Coalition, a Washington statewide organization leading revolutionary work for our movements and communities of color through their sabbatical program. My role started as a coach, and as I weaved in my traditional practices, it transformed into what I am calling a sabbatical doula.
As a sabbatical doula, I accompany leaders preparing to rest by centering healing and supporting them with reflective practice, dreaming, planning for the phases of their sabbatical, engaging with different forms of rest, as well as with organizational development, strategy, structure, and succession planning.
We are in a moment where our energy is needed to continue to fight for the liberation of Palestine and other Land Back movements. Our solidarities and attention are also needed in the Congo, Sudan, Haiti, and our local struggles. We are navigating complex times, and we need to take turns holding the weight of these important responsibilities and making time to rest.
An essential part of getting ready for my sabbatical in the summer of 2023 was giving myself permission to rest and be ready to receive it. As an Indigenous person who is also an immigrant, I was socialized to work hard, to push past the limits of my will and body, to work until I had nothing else to give. It took me a long time to see the systemic violences that had pushed me to think of my body as a working machine. Additionally, my leadership development as a young person and in community work was to serve others and be a servant leader. It was hard to learn to include me in that service. For example, I would skip meals and work long days at the office, staying hungry and tired because I wanted to finish all my tasks to have successful programming for youth, or I would ignore pain in my body caused by stress to finish reports for funders to keep getting the support we needed for our programs. Eventually, I realized that I was not modeling what I wanted for youth, and I also had to deal with health issues as a result of not listening to my body. Undoing and regenerating new practices is taking me time and intentionality. It is a constant fight against the systems of capitalism, neocolonization, and oppression.
In my journey toward reclamation, transformation, and sovereignty, I have studied leadership models, governance, and frameworks with a particular focus on Indigenous ways of being. These knowledges along with the wisdom of Black theorists and practitioners, have been pivotal in transforming my practices. A personal fundamental text is Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey. In her book, she lays the groundwork to reimagine, dream, and resist grind culture by practicing rest with an analysis of capitalism and white supremacy. She explains: “Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism. It views our divine bodies as machines. Our worth is not connected to how much we produce. [...] Our bodies are a tool agent for change. A site of liberation.” As we continue our rest practice, we do it in the context of racial and social justice, with futuristic visions and an understanding that resting means going against systems that make it almost impossible to do it. And, yet, to remember that it is possible to rest.
Being ready to care for your physical self and emotional body is also important, as rest invites you into healing. In this sabbatical, rest made space to listen to my body in new ways. It also allowed me to tend to the grief I needed to care for in my journey. My somatic practice and the traditional Indigenous healing of curanderismo allowed me to be open, and adding rest alchemized my experience, creating a portal of time and space to listen more deeply to my body and spirit.
Joy
In getting ready to do intentional rest, I thought, “I’m going to rest all the time. Catch me at the hammock!” And although that seems like a dream for an exhausted body, I also craved movement and connection during my time away. I designated my first two weeks to visit and spend time with my grandmother. She lives in the mountains in rural Oaxaca, and I arrived when it was time to farm, clear the land, plant corn, grind coffee, gather wood, and do other hard physical labor. It was challenging to realize that the two weeks I had imagined as a time of ease required work. I kept my commitment during those days by making pockets of rest and journaling. As the second week came up, and because I stayed clear in my intention of rest and being present, I had the clarity to see that I received other forms of rest. I had mental, emotional, and spiritual rest. My soul felt rested. I deepened my connection with my grandmother, my ancestors, and the land. I also got to laugh, play, dance, and strengthen my familial and community relationships. The joy of this experience will forever travel with me.
Setting the right expectations for disconnection is essential. Disconnecting and resting go hand-in-hand but are not necessarily the same. You can disconnect from the city or the people and get no rest because, mentally, you are imbued with work. Or, you can rest physically and miss the connections to the people you love. A question to explore is: What kind of rest do I need right now?
I engaged in different kinds of rest through the forty days I was away. I felt rested by spending long days swimming and playing in the water with my partner, reading while eating fresh fruit, hiking with my dad after a storm had passed, making earrings for my aunty, embroidering slowly, journaling, talking to my parents while eating arroz con leche, definitely, a lot of laying on the hammock and taking naps, periods of silence, contemplating the mountains, the sky, the ocean, meditating, and dancing on the streets of Oaxaca with my Zapotec teacher Evita. Rest allowed me to have many moments of joy.
Liberation
Rest will also open the space to practice liberation. Liberation is the radical process of stepping away, even if temporarily, from systems that seem inescapable and, by doing so, dismantling those same systems. We have to practice liberation. It is hard because we are constantly working against systems of oppression and socialization that pull us away from ourselves and our commitments.
For many years, Black feminists and womanists have been opening the way for liberation. We must practice how liberation feels in our bodies in small ways and continue to experiment and open avenues that are healthy, in good relation, and transformative. What is an area in your body you are willing to set free from the confines of societal expectations? I invite you to take a moment, close your eyes, take a few slow breaths, and feel that part of your body speaking to you. What healing is needed for you to explore and experiment with that liberation? Consider journaling to explore these questions and be open to what your body is ready to teach you about healing and liberation.
Rest, joy, and liberation are interconnected. In our search for collective liberation, we want everyone, especially Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, to have the best conditions to thrive. Rest allows us to have clarity and grounding to engage in healing. This healing sets the environment to deepen our collective liberation, not only for this moment but for generations to come.
Eight practices to support your sabbatical dream:
A plan to practice is essential because a sabbatical needs to be a priority, as it requires intentionality and time to craft it carefully. Here are eight practices that have helped me and the folks I support in our sabbatical journeys and that I invite you to include in your care and rest rituals.
Keep an imperfect rest journal. Write in your journal how you engage in rest, how rest is showing up or being slippery, your commitments, and your progress. It is a forgiving and imperfect journal because if you have to pause, you can always return to it again and again.
Practice with the Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture daily or as often as possible. Make time to pull a card, meditate, reflect, and practice.
Explore an area of your personal life that has been speaking to you. Make time to listen to it and hold it tenderly.
Make a list of what brings you joy and include those actions in your life as much as possible.
Delete your work email app from your phone on weekends. Observe your relationship with work apps and work texts. Spend a day, or more, without email, TV and social media.
Take short periods of rest. Create mini sabbaths, like a long weekend, at home or nearby, to experiment with rest to help you prepare for a longer sabbatical. Find experiences of rest. Curate a rest date: a dedicated time to rest, like a mindful walk in a local park by yourself.
Make moments of pleasure and rest that stay away from consumerism. Find moments of bliss, like eating a ripe mango, sipping your favorite tea on a cozy blanket, or lying naked on your bed after a bath.
Choose a liberation practice and experiment with it.
May we continue to find what brings us joy, rest, liberation, and healing for ourselves, our collectives, the world, and the future generations.