Rest

I briefly mentioned in my post two weeks ago on bereavement leave that one of the things I did was rest a lot.  I don’t mind admitting that this was something I found really hard.  I have written previously about the impact that grief has on our nervous system, with an increase in both adrenaline and cortisol in response to the stress of bereavement taking us outside of our window of tolerance.  It is crucial that we find ways to help our nervous system to become regulated again so that we can begin to heal, and one of the key ways to do this is by rest.  It’s not as easy as just telling ourselves to calm down and chill out, of course, and I found a focus on rest to paradoxically be really hard work! That reminds me of this lovely quote from Brittin Oakman.

Grief is exhausting, with lots going on in your body, your nervous system and your brain.  As Octavia F. Raheem writes in Pause, Rest, Be: Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change;

You may think you are not doing very much at all.

All of this shifting from the inside out.

All of this adjusting and readjusting to what is.

All of this releasing and letting go requires energy.

One of the hardest things about learning to rest was giving myself permission to do so.  As you know, I spent a lot of my bereavement leave “working” on my grief, reading and writing and researching any way I could to understand more about what I was going through.  I don’t regret that approach at all, and I learnt so much that helped me.  However, on reflection I think it is obvious that I didn’t initially know how to just stop and allow myself to grieve, and that that is a product of the society in which we live.  As Tricia Hersey writes in Rest is Resistance;

As a culture, we don’t know how to rest, and our understanding of rest has been influenced by the toxicity of grind culture. We believe rest is a luxury, privilege, and an extra treat we can give to ourselves after suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Rest isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to survive and thrive. Rest isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human…..Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough and that we must always be guiding our lives toward more labor.

In recent years I have learned so much about how to work in a more easeful way from my business coaches, the Wild Academy, and I am grateful that they continued to offer me advice and reassurance as I chose to reduce my working hours and the number of clients I support when I returned to work after bereavement leave.  However, it continues to be a battle for me between knowing that a less stressful work life with time to rest and play is what I need and still feeling the pull to be doing more, earning more, being more successful (whatever that means!) 

I know this is my ego talking, and just because I could do more it doesn’t mean I should.  Every habit is hard to break, and since starting my own business nearly 14 years ago I’ve had years of working hard and being busy, and of that being perceived by others as the very definition of a successful business owner, so it’s difficult to get used to doing work and life in a different way, especially when it is so counter-cultural.  As Molly Remer writes in Walking with Persephone: A journey of midlife descent and renewal;

When I am in an unfamiliar state of ease, of rest, I find myself casting around for the push, for the familiar tension, for the agitated unrest of perhaps not being able to “get it all done.” I create it for myself like an addiction, a hit of overwork to remind me I’m here, to stoke my brain into overdrive, to recognize myself as worthy and valuable. It feels safer to be overwhelmed, overdone, overbooked, overcommitted. Not being maxed to the limit, pushed to the edge, feels dangerously calm, unpleasantly easy, worrisomely peaceful.

One of the other things I struggle with is that it isn’t just work that gets in the way of rest.  Things that start off as hobbies or things I do for pleasure can easily become sources of stress or pressure, and usually through no one’s fault but mine.  Here’s a few examples,

• Reading for pleasure can become, via my Goodreads App, a pressure to hit targets for the number of books I read each month.

• Walking for pleasure can become, via my Fitbit, a pressure to hit 10,000 steps a day.

• Singing for pleasure can become a pressure to learn the songs and be off music at the same time as the others in my Octet so that I don’t let them down or feel behind.

• Catching up with friends and family for pleasure can become a pressure to host the perfect day, to clean the house and offer home cooked food, to meet up with everyone regularly and not let anyone down by cancelling on them at the last minute.

• Writing for pleasure can become a pressure to make sure I have something to share each week in my writing group, or to have an article ready to publish here on Substack every Saturday morning.

While it is true that both no one else is putting pressure on me to achieve these things and that they are clear indicators of an aspect of my personality to push myself, set targets and not let myself or others down, I do also think that this is a byproduct of living in a society in which being busy is equated with being successful, and just letting things be easy is equated with laziness and not fulfilling our potential.  Learning to rest more is most definitely a work in progress for me but I’m getting there, little by little, while also, as Molly Remer writes, acknowledging that;

Trying to do too much is a symptom and sign of having a full and vibrant life and a reminder of how very much good work there is to do in the world, so much purpose that calls my name. How fortunate I am to be so full, to be attached to so many people and causes and projects, these things are signs, the symptoms, and the threads of a vibrant life of deep care and a wellspring of love. There is no shame needed in offering out what you have within you to give and there is no shame in stepping back and saying, enough.