Who Taught Us How to Rest—or Are We Just Distracting Ourselves?

Since my brain injury in 2021, rest is something I can’t ignore. It’s no longer optional or negotiable. Yet, I realize how little I understand it. For a long time, rest meant less demanding activities—watching, listening, engaging differently. Now, I see that what I called 'rest' was still consuming, maybe even avoiding.

Recently, I participated in my first artist market. I underestimated not just the day, but everything around it: preparation, decisions, mishaps. My printer broke, the materials arrived late, and I struggled to present my work. Each issue felt manageable on its own, but together they created relentless cognitive noise.

At one point, my hands cramped up while I tried to fix my printer. Pain moved through my body—a clear signal to stop. And only then did I stop because I was forced to.

The market day lasted nearly 9 hours—conversation, stimulation, reconnection. Excitement carried me further than I should have gone. Even when I sensed something was wrong, I kept going.

When I got home, my brain was full. Instead of resting, I added more input, sound, and engagement. I didn’t know how to stop.

And that feels like the real question: have we ever actually learned to rest, or have we just found quieter ways to keep going that only seem like rest?

It’s been days, and the effects still linger. Part of me regrets my choice, wishes I had foreseen the cost. But another part recognizes that I am learning—by stumbling, by misjudging, by recovering. By truly noticing.

I know my situation is specific. Living with a brain injury has made my limits more visible, more immediate. But I don’t think this is only about me.

Maybe it isn’t that we’ve forgotten how to rest, but that we were never taught how to. If we never learned what rest truly means, it makes sense that we emphasize productivity, output, and endurance over it, rarely questioning why.

Unconsciously, we impose the same standard on others—that they should persevere, never need rest, as if slowing down is weakness rather than necessity.

I’ve been thinking about how this shows up in my own life, in methods I didn’t recognize before. In the past, I believed that being in a relationship with my Indigenous ancestors meant meeting them through struggle—through intensity, through putting myself in difficult situations, physically and emotionally, pushing my body beyond its limits. I thought that was a form of honoring.

But now, in this process of recovery, I’m beginning to understand something else. Honoring them might not be about endurance. It might be about care.

It's about living sustainably. Listening to my body when it says stop. Allowing slowness. Being in sync with the natural world, not constantly overriding it. The most respectful thing may be to move toward wholeness rather than toward harm.

So I keep returning to these questions: What does it truly mean to learn to rest? How can we shift our perspective to view rest as essential rather than optional? And, importantly, how do we extend permission to rest—not only for ourselves, but for each other?

Maybe the work isn’t about remembering how to rest, but about learning it for the first time. And in that learning, perhaps we find a different kind of honoring—one that esteems wholeness and care.

A way of being that follows the land—where rest is already understood.