{"id":12410,"date":"2025-02-02T18:02:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T00:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/?p=12410"},"modified":"2025-02-02T18:02:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T00:02:54","slug":"slow-digest-embodiment-ii-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/slow-digest-embodiment-ii-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow Digest: Embodiment II (Rest)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week\u2019s edition of <\/em>Slow Digest was written by C21 Graduate Fellow Jamee N. Pritchard.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eat, Pray, Love, and Liberation: The Search for Rest<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tricia Hersey, the founder of The Nap Ministry and author of Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto<\/em>, argues that rest is a radical and necessary act of resistance against systems of exploitation that demand constant labor. Rest is an act of defiance against structures that demand relentless work and exhaustion. By choosing to rest, she explains, individuals can reclaim their time, bodies, and autonomy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, how do we truly embody rest? It is not just about physical sleep but is a tool for healing emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds. It provides space to reflect, recharge, and reconnect with our bodies and needs, particularly in capitalist cultures where rest is viewed as unnecessary or unproductive amidst the glorification of hustle culture that leads us to burnout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some Black women, reclaiming rest means leaving the United States entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConsidering the education level that Black women have, it\u2019s not normal that we have worked, worked, worked constantly and consistently throughout our entire adult lives and will [continue], most of us, until retirement age, which is a scam\u201d (Girma<\/a>, 2023). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This quote is from Stephanie Perry, one of the co-founders of ExodUS Summit, an organization and annual event that provides Black women with the information they need to take year-long sabbaticals, or seasons of rest. Perry is a part of the growing movement of Black women that are leaving the United States for other parts of the world that offer a life of ease, a life free of hard work, where Black women prioritize themselves and center healing, joy, and fulfillment without guilt. It is about moving beyond the \u201csuperwoman complex\u201d that socializes Black women and girls to feel an obligation to present an image of strength at all times, to suppress emotions, to resist vulnerability, to maintain a drive for success despite limited resources, and to feel an obligation to help others\u201d (Manke<\/a>, 2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Black women, moving abroad in search of rest means prioritizing their sense of empowerment and fulfillment. Dr. Thema Bryant (2022) calls this fulfillment a homecoming \u2013 the process of reclaiming one\u2019s whole, authentic self. One\u2019s homecoming is not found through the exhaustion that many Black women undergo in their daily lives in the U.S. It is not the result of grinding and hustling; it is the result of rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I call this search for rest \u201cEat, Pray, Love\u201d migration. It is an extension of existential mobility that centers reinvention, self-discovery, and the liberation of self. It is the definition of slow embodiment that is fueled by a politics of care and the radical idea of rest as resistance. I pull the phrase \u201ceat, pray, love\u201d from the popular memoir written by Elizabeth Gilbert (2007), a white woman, who travels the world in search of self-discovery after her divorce. She leaves behind many of the achievements associated with the American ideal of success and actively participates in a life of ease through travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Black women, the intersections of race, gender, and class are central to this type of migration and the process of finding rest. Looking at the history of travel among Black communities, \u201cEat, Pray, Love\u201d migration among Black women falls into the tradition of travel as a liberation strategy. In its company is the Great Migration that saw millions of Black American migrants from the rural South relocate to cities in the North, Midwest, and West from 1910-1970; the New Great Migration that began in 1970 and is on-going, as second and third generation Black Americans are moving to the \u201cNew South;\u201d and the Black Travel Movement that began in 2013, defined by a dramatic increase of international travel by African American Millennials, particularly women, and is tied to social media documentation of Black travel as a tool of radical social change (Gill, 2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEat, Pray, Love\u201d migration involves the privilege of time, money, and support in moving abroad or planning a one-year sabbatical to rest. It is a liberation strategy for middle-class, typically college-educated, mostly child-free, retired, and\/or single Black women. But, these women are building a community of care to help other women find rest in economical ways as well. This community building, too, is a key tenet to Hersey\u2019s idea of rest as resistance: collective action around rest that urges communities to come together in order to reclaim their time and refuse exploitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embodying rest is an act of resistance in a world that prizes productivity and overwork, and while a lot of us may not yet be in the position to experience a year-long sabbatical of self-discovery through liberatory international travel, we can still reclaim our time and energy through smaller, intentional moments of rest, whether it’s taking a quiet weekend to recharge, setting boundaries around work, or simply allowing ourselves the space to breathe and exist without constant expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/h5>\n\n\n\n