the shades of rest
Thanks to a friend’s local buy-nothing group, I have a new little fiddle leaf fig tree in between my writing nook and the bookshelf that serves as my pantry. She arrived with a little bb leaf just starting to unfurl, tiny and pale green and delicate.
Over the last two weeks, the little leaf has grown steadily, then exponentially, deepening into a dark glossy green, thick like the others — floppy, when I let the pot dry out an extra day or two, and popping up again a few hours after a douse of water.
This morning, I touched the leaf as the soft April rain clattered on the tin-lined skylights above it. It’s not quite as strong as the others, not yet, but it’s close. I still can’t quite believe she put out a whole entire leaf in just two weeks. Is it a tremendous effort? I wondered about the next one, before I caught myself. I imagine my little ficus might first need some rest.
I find there are a few different kinds of rest, and we often conflate them. Sometimes we’re in a state of recovery, where rest is healing something that has been broken or injured. Sometimes we’re at baseline, and rest is a thing that nourishes us around that homeostasis.
Any time a body goes through something — a transition, a big decision, an illness, an injury, a pregnancy, birth, a breakup, a new relationship, a move, the end of a job — there is an opportunity and need to recover afterwards, because the diversion away from homeostasis has been so big. That recovery rest is a different, deeper, intensive kind of rest, because recovery is active. The body is repairing itself, and that takes work.
Rest is hard — by design, not by accident. It is a tenet of white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy and ableism, a deeply held belief that those systems require in order to continue functioning. If we step back from paid labor, then we are not producing for capitalism; if we step back from domestic or emotional labor, then we are not maintaining patriarchy. If we shape our lives around our bodies rather than forcing our bodies to fit our lives, we are releasing ableism. It is by design that it is hard to go against those values.
It’s also why the teachers and guides for this are people who have practiced it the most — Black, Indigenous, and brown disabled women and queer folks. It’s why they are at the core of movements like disability justice and reproductive justice; it’s why they’ve created work like Care Work or Black Disability Politics or SisterSong or My Grandmother’s Hands or Who Is Wellness For? or Nurture or the Body Is Not an Apology or Nap Ministry or Pleasure Activism or so many others. (all my recs here, if you’re curious!) That’s not by accident either. It’s also by design — a radical reimagining kind of design — that takes energy and work and creativity and community and grace and forgiveness and surrender and patience and so much time.
So if you find yourself, like I do, caught up in the beautifully bursting spring energy, putting out your own little tendrils, strengthening them over this gloriously abundant season — may I offer a gentle reminder to rest, too. Wishing you the rest of recovery as well as the rest of homeostasis, as needed, without hesitation. The world needs your unfurling, tiny and pale green and delicate, as it needs your glossy dark and strong roots.
a few medicines:
my friend Briar distills her studio-grown rose geranium for some earthy spring refreshment.
my favorite moment is when a project is finished, until….then what?
actions for cis people.
until next time.