Is this sustainable?!

In Denmark, a white colonizing country, we know we’re worthy of vacation. Every single employee has five weeks of paid vacation per year. (We even have something called feriepenge, meaning vacation money.) We believe in our right to rest. Living here in the US for the past seven years, I have come to unlearn this, believing that it’s not ok to rest. 

This is a problem. 

Especially now. 

Here is the one thing I am hearing again and again in sessions these days from BIPOC and QTPOC clients:

“I am not doing enough. I should be doing more.”

This is said even after I hear every single individual extensively share how much they are working. 

By work I mean endlessly posting on social media, protesting, talking to white folks, organizing, writing poetry, and let’s not forget: feeling all the feels.

There is this myth that we have to exhaust ourselves in order to earn the right to rest.

Let me tell you something.

We can do both: rest AND demand justice!

I will be frank with you.

I crashed in bed multiple times these past weeks. And now I am saying this has to stop. This is why I am planning my next vacation. Oh yes! 

Yes, we need to keep up the energy of the #BLM movement!  

But let’s make it sustainable. How? Check out this week’s video.

During rest we get clear. We get clear on what our part is in making the world better.

Each one of us has a role in this movement. We need to stay centered to know in our bodies what that role is.

Stop feeling guilty for taking care of you! 

As marginalized folks, taking care of ourselves is a radical act.

Rest and liberation are intimately connected. Juneteenth marks when enslaved people, technically already "free" were finally able to realize that freedom and to lay down "the master's" tools and be free of "the master." Free to rest for themselves, finally.

So ask yourself: what no longer sustains me?

Listen carefully to the answer.

Where do you need to set boundaries? 

What no longer serves you?

Is it a relationship? A job? A pattern?

Thank the process. And let go.

Hug hug,

Nora