When you prioritize rest alongside your social justice work, people may look at you funny. It’s counter cultural to not stay fully immersed in the strategizing, planning, and many urgent demands. And yet rest is essential to integrate and continue doing powerful work.
When I was a community organizer, I worked all the time: planning meetings, recruiting new volunteers, managing staff, and implementing a collaborative strategy. I loved it, but I rarely took a break.
Then I was preparing for a big direct action, and my lung spontaneously collapsed! I got great medical care, but I required a month of rest, kept me at home until the week before the direct action.
I wanted to run back into work, but my body demanded a new rhythm. A slower rhythm that I had felt my body desiring for years, but I never made my rest a priority. Helping others was the priority, even when it meant sacrificing myself.
Rest is essential for integration, and when you don’t plan for it, your body may demand it. Athletes prioritize rest between workouts so their muscles can repair themselves and integrate new gains, and if they don’t they get injured easily. I see activists and social justice organizers forget to rest, and instead develop chronic sickness, depression, or other manifestations of illness.
If you put an athlete’s effort into your social justice work, are you also following an athlete’s rest regiment? Right after you complete a big project, you may feel the adrenaline high, but soon your body will need to rest. Give your body the chance to recover and integrate what you learned during the project.
Like an athlete, your rest is more likely to happen if you plan for it. So look ahead to your next big project, and give yourself rest in the lead up, so you can maximize the power you’re building.
