tl;dr – The Summer of Rest begins next Monday and I’m calling you in to join the circle.
You tired babes, you pleasure seekers, you rebels longing for a more human way to exist in the world. I’m calling you in with open arms. Let us gather round and slump into soft puddles, sweet limbs entangled. Gentle, tender, powerful, and grounded in ourselves.
We’ll spend the month of August together, hanging out on Signal (like whatsapp but less Meta-y) and practicing slowing the fuck down, cultivating safety, and the soft pleasures of coming back to ourselves. You want in?
Hello you,
Can I tell you a secret? Rest is not my natural state. I’m not always comfortable with the quiet, and there are days when I’d prefer to distract myself with pretty much anything rather than slow down.
Historically, I run anxious. Given the opportunity my mind will gladly spin my off axis and into the stratosphere, far away from my body. Which means that all the reasons you have for not slowing down? I know them intimately.
The ‘I don’t have time’ – I know it.
The ‘I’m bad at this, shouldn’t it be easier?’ – I know it.
The urgent feeling that if you stop, even for a moment, you’ll fall behind in some imaginary race? The uncomfortable shakiness of what your value is if you’re not always ‘on’, or available for others, or productive? I know those too.
I know them. Heck, I still whisper them to myself occasionally, even after fifteen years of practicing and teaching rest. And (this is the important part) I come back to myself anyway. I practice slowing down anyway.
Because I know that following those doubts and stories down the path will not take me where I want to go.
If I let my decisions be directed by urgency and perfectionism, or the sense that my worth is somehow earned by how much I can give? That’s how shit stays the same. Same capitalist, white supremacist stories playing out over and over again. And oh god do I want new stories for us all.
I want us to have stories that allow for our human complexities and shifting energy levels. I want stories that remind us that our softness and slowness and pleasure are powerful and necessary. I want stories that help us feel safe in our bodies, rooted in our inherent worthiness, and able to receive support from our communities so we don’t think we have to do it all alone.
Most importantly, I want the world that those stories will help create.
And the thing about building new worlds is that it feels impossibly huge unless we just start with ourselves. Our own relationship to rest, softness, pleasure. So that’s what I’m doing.
If you want to join me, the Summer of Rest is starting next Monday, August 1st. It would be such a pleasure to have you there as we wander through a month of rest, pleasure, and reimagining the world.
I’ve been going intentionally slow with the creation and selling of this, which means there’s no comprehensive sales page. If you’ve got questions about how things will work, or what we’ll be exploring, just reply to this email. I’m happy to answer them!
〰️ Work with me