Below is the text of an email we distributed to our community today. (If you’d like to receive updates and resources from us, please subscribe!)
Dear Friends,
We are going home to ourselves — where we intend to find moments of stillness and splendor — for the next two weeks. As a team, we have agreed to shift our attention from work emails to our well-being! Which means you won’t be receiving any notes or messages from us until after January 4th.
As we reflect on what it means to step away, we find ourselves in the tension of our deepest, life-giving work as a source of pleasure and vitality along with our inherent human need to rest.
The truth is, we LOVE the work we do! It is our legacy, it is our life’s work, it is our heart’s work. Yet, as entrepreneurs and community builders, so much of our worth gets tied to our output. We find ourselves saying, “well, my work gives me energy” or “I genuinely enjoy my work so I don’t necessarily need to unplug.”
And here’s another truth: working is not rest. We work within the structures of hierarchy, control, and power (capitalism and white supremacy). That’s where we find ourselves as contributing humans of this society; in a system that wasn’t designed to reward people for taking rest. It’s a hard truth for us to digest but we are learning that multiple truths can exist at the same time. We are listening to our bodies to honor the need to pause and radically step away for two full weeks.
And we are NOT stepping off the gas pedal to regather, reassess, reenergize for 2022. No, we aren’t resting with the temporary intention to prepare for more productivity or better ideas. We are resting to be with ourselves, our families, our communities, our natural surroundings, our bodies, or wherever we feel refuge. And we will continue resting as an ongoing practice. Why? Because we deserve it. You deserve it. Period.
We are proud of the hard, deep work we are doing with YOU. 🙏🏾Thank you for being in community with us. Cheers to a truly remarkable year. We send each of you our warmest wishes for rest, reflection, connection, and presence.
See you in 2022!
🙏🏾❤️✨ In community and reverence,
The Darkest Horse Team 🦄
Practices, movements, and resources that we’re learning about rest from:
- Practice: Guided meditation on “Rest Life” by Tricia Hersey
- Practice: Guided meditation on Relaxing Back Into Awareness
- Read: Go where you are honored this holiday season
- Read: Shifting the Culture of Care
- Read and Explore: The Nap Ministry, a movement led by Tricia Hersey
- Listen: “The Nap Bishop on why resting is radical resistance” podcast interview feat. Tricia Hersey
- Listen: ✨TDH started a collaborative Winter Solstice Playlist — check it out, and contribute to it! ✨
