The Rest and Resist Project

20 conversations in 60 days

Dec 1, 2024- Jan 31, 2025

The Rest and Resist Project is a space for 20 women+ and mothers to receive 90 minutes with me, between December 1, 2024 and January 31st, 2025 to recognize their exhaustion, to rethink rest, and to reclaim their humanity, even when the world tries to tell them that they are unworthy.

These sessions create an opportunity for me to deepen relationships with people in my community (like you!), to learn more about what you need, and to reciprocate the gifts I have received from philosophy by paying it forward.

Right now, so many women in my community are asking: How can I resist oppression and injustice when I already feel like I’m barely keeping it together?

Between work, kids, grocery shopping, doctors’ appointments, unanswered emails, rising prices, and the unending barrage of news about the dire state of the world, many of us feel like we’re drowning.

We need what all humans need: Sleep. Safety. Ease. We need our nerves to calm down.

We are exhausted.

No Rest for the Weary

But for many of us, rest doesn’t even feel like an option.

Even acknowledging that you need rest can be emotionally painful. You may feel grief, anger, or abandonment because it seems like you can’t get rest or that no one is coming to help you.

Maybe you feel guilty or ashamed at the thought of resting. You bump up against conditioning that tells you that you don’t really deserve rest, that you won’t be “good” or “worthy” if you’re not constantly working, or that you need to burn yourself out in order to earn your keep on this planet.

Besides, the world needs help. People are suffering. All those posts on social media say “Silence is violence,” and “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” and “Ever wondered what you would have done during the rise of fascism? You’re doing it right now.”

We believe we can’t rest. So we feel so powerless and exhausted that we don’t have the energy or spirit to resist. Instead, we fall into overwhelm and despair, and shut down.

Rethink Rest and Resistance

There has to be another way.

Maybe rest doesn’t require bubble baths, yoga, or making “self care” one more item on your to-do list. And maybe resistance is not about being out in the streets, screaming against injustice, going to endless organizing meetings, and posting on social media with every spare minute that you have.

What if rest itself is a form of resistance?

Black liberation activists such as bell hooks and Audre Lorde have been saying for decades that rest is resistance. Black artist, activist, and author of Rest is Resistance, Trisha Hersey claims that, “Rest pushes back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine.”

What if rest-as-resistance is really about how you talk to yourself?

What if it is about feeling worthy as a human being, regardless of what you do or don’t do? A sunflower doesn’t ask itself if its doing enough to exist.

What if rest-as-resistance is about trusting the voice inside you that tells you to play, to let loose, to know that you are held in the great mystery of this world? What if it is letting yourself relax into safety, even when the world feels unsafe?

What if rest-as-resistance means that we refuse to let this system rob us of our vitality, our peace, our humanity.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Sure Danielle, that sounds nice. But how?” then the Rest and Resist Project is for you.

There are ways to feel safer in the world, to feel more aliveness, more peace, more ease, I promise you.

THIS PROJECT IS FOR YOU IF…

• You identify as a woman, womxn, (she/her), non-binary, gender-fluid, and/or queer (they/them).

• You are exhausted, burnt out, overwhelmed, and you think that there has to be a better way.

• You are tired of feeling powerless.

• You are willing to explore new ways of seeing yourself as fundamentally worthy.

THIS PROJECT IS NOT FOR YOU IF…

• You have resigned yourself to grinding and feeling worthless forever.

I BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU rest-as-resistance, YOU WILL:

• Feel better, think more clearly, and have more energy

• Find a deep sense of being enough, having enough, and doing enough

• Be more empowered to make positive changes in your community

• Celebrate, honor, amplify, and lift up women+, and other marginalized and oppressed people

TOGETHER, DURING THIS Conversation, WE WILL:

Each Rest and Resist Project call is 90 minutes and designed to do a few very specific things:

1. Articulate your stories about rest and resistance: In what ways are you telling a story of rest? Of resistance?

2. Explore your vision for rest-as-resistance: What would your life look like if you were able to rethink rest? What would it feel like to feel safe and at ease in the world, no matter what?

3. Make a Rest and Resist Plan: What would it take for you to get more rest? What would need to change in your inner and outer worlds? How could you go about doing that?

4. Decide if a Philosophical Coaching Program with me is the next step for you. I am looking for 12 women to join me in One-on-One or the Mother Pack Group Philosophical Coaching Programs.

Projects like this are part of how I connect with my ideal coaching clients and fill the limited coaching spots I have available in my practice each season, but these sessions are designed to have value for you as a stand alone experience.

DURING THIS CALL, WE WILL NOT:

1. Immediately transform your life to one of complete stress-free rest.

2. Diagnose or treat any medical condition.

3. Achieve ultimate spiritual enlightenment.

How do you book one of the 20 spots? 

Please follow these steps:

Rest Affirms our Humanity. Rest is Resistance.