Step away from the big, hot cauldron of feelings and take a day off

“You’re allowed to take a day off. Don’t be bringing that salty ass into our soup,” I said to a comrade recently about a shared experience we had.

Sometimes, I come up with good ones.

Having worked within the nonprofit industrial complex for the better part of the last 15 years has helped me to understand how this massive effort of people who approach their work from a caring place. It can be marvelously rewarding, and it can be technically ridiculous, in that circumstances are worthy of ridicule. But none of it has ever been disingenuous.

But I’ve learned the hard way to zealously guard my time because when I’m not having a good time, no one’s having a good time.

As an alcoholic in recovery, what I’ve learned about me having a bad day is that it’s entirely my own making because I have unspoken expectations that I feel aren’t being met. That’s not to say that circumstances that are unjust are excused, it’s just that as someone who’s been through a step-based recovery program that helps me identify my own part in most any circumstance, me having a bad day is no call to take it out on others.

For those of us in movement work who care deeply about our people, Abrahamic culture has taught us to endure suffering for the greater good. But liberation teaches us that rest is revolutionary.

A friend recently told me about a coworker they’ve just started to get to know. This coworker is fond of listing the current struggles and trials they’re experiencing at work while simultaneously acting in ways that perpetuate their struggles. Ultimately, they say things like, “If I don’t do it, no one else will,” or “I just can’t leave things unfinished.” Where this attitude intersected with my friend was in how training a new employee was going to fall on the coworker because it “always” falls on that coworker.

I told my friend, from my own experience, when that coworker isn’t having a good time, no one’s having a good time.

There are so many theories of change that I can use to apply analysis in these kinds of dynamics. But what it boils down to whenever I encounter people in movement work who are tired, I tell them to go rest. For those of us in the nonprofit industrial complex in salaried positions, it’s important to untangle the feelings of scarcity that we learned in hourly positions. Realizing that we’re no longer in a powerless position is intimidating and might even cause some shame that we’re no longer struggling like we used to.

But that’s how effective growth happens, owning our own power and privilege.

In these times when I’m seeing repeating patterns that preceded the international uprising for justice that followed the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd, the most insidious is people in movement work being led to believe that they have to give all to the movement. Sustainable change happens when we know when to tap out and tap back in.

Healing happens when we let others tap out and tap back in without prosecuting their human need to rest.

Much of our shared work is based on the premise that we’re all people deserving of dignity and justice, not just in spite of our identities and circumstances, but because of our identities and circumstances. And when we fight injustice and throw everything we have at that fight, we get to rest, too. Being strategic about where we put our energy means that we save our biggest, hottest cauldron of feelings for the fight but when we start throwing it at our friends and relatives in the fight with us, we absolutely must rest to preserve our relationships and our sense of self.

So if you’re not feeling it today, take the day off if you have the time to take off. Come back tomorrow or the next day, the work will still be here.

To learn more about how I was radicalized into resting, please read all things by The Nap Ministry founder and Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey