Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelly here.

And today we're going to talk about opting out of being busy and bothered and how to opt into rest.

This conversation has been on my brain for quite some time, and then I've started seeing it in the

conversations I'm having with friends, and then even in the media. For example, Serena Williams

posted about how she's unlearning,

being busy all the time, how to rest. She doesn't know how to do that. And I thought,

yeah, I think so many black women feel that way. And I had this powerful conversation with a dear friend of mine. And she talked about

going on vacation and how she couldn't unwind on vacation, that she stayed busy. She didn't know how to

cultivate a life of rest. And then she said she turned to her mother and saw that her mother,

and this is a quote from her, even in the midst of joy, couldn't find rest. And that phrase gave me

goosebumps because I thought, yeah, I struggle with rest as well. I in the past have

trended toward being busy and bothered and always doing something and going somewhere or feeling

like I had to do. I'm going to be honest with y'all, I still struggle with rest. And then I think

about my mother and my grandmother and what I know of them

as these phenomenal women who worked so, so hard and were busy people. And I wondered, you know, how much joy do we get to have as black women

when we don't know how to rest. We don't know what that looks like. And this isn't about

blaming anybody. I think we've been socially conditioned. No, I don't think it. I know it. We have been

socially and culturally conditioned, whether it's the ripple effect across the globe of slavery

or the media culture to teach us that busyness is rewarded. Business is a state of being that

we have intergenerational inherited.

Rest is not something that is talked about, that is common, that is celebrated in our communities

and in our culture.

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