Rest has always been hard for me.

When I slow down, guilt shows up first. Then anxiety. Then the panic that I should be doing something. Anything.

I’ve tied my worth to how much I do for as long as I can remember. Especially what I do for others. If I’m not producing, helping, fixing, building… who am I?

So when I rest, my brain doesn’t.

It speeds up.

Lately it’s been running a trauma loop. Replaying. Rethinking. Re-feeling. When my body slows down, my mind tries to take over.

And that makes rest even harder.

Add disability into the mix and it gets complicated.

If I push myself to exhaustion, I pay for it. Usually in pain. Usually for days. Hard to move. Hard to function.

And yet… I still do it sometimes.

“I won’t do that again,” I say.
And then I do it again. 🙃

But something shifted this year.

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal:
Start listening to my body.

SomeBODY has to do it.

I realized I was burning out. Pushing too hard. Getting sick. Running on fumes.

And then there’s this deeper layer.

The death of my daughter, Nicole, on September 7, 2024 changed everything.

I made a promise to her.

That I would live for both of us now.

And living doesn’t mean running myself into the ground.

It means staying healthy. Staying present. Staying here.

Rest isn’t weakness.

It’s sustainability.

Nap time is sacred over here. I get up between 4:30 and 5:30am most days. By noon, I’m exhausted. So I nap. Some days I only rest my eyes. Some days I sleep hard. Other days I skip it and go to bed at 7pm like someone’s grandma.

And that’s okay.

Rest looks different now than it did five years ago.

Because I’m different.

Life is different.

Grief is different.

My body is different.

Learning to rest has been like learning a new language.

Start small. Two minutes. Just two. Then five.

I still struggle to do nothing.

But I’m getting there.

You matter.

You are important.

You deserve rest.

Not because you earned it.

But because you are human.

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💛 Your Turn

Do you struggle with resting without guilt?

What does refueling look like for you?

Leave a comment on the blog. Let’s normalize rest together.