This Week: Your Body Needs Rest

Trying to learn. Trying to rest.

Dear fam,

Most nights, Big Kid does about two dozen headstands before going to sleep. This is after lights out, once both kids have brushed their teeth, gotten jammies on, and had snuggles with their moms. On one side of the room, Toddler is trying to escape her bed and whining that the bedspread is all wrong. On the other, Big Kid is teaching herself acrobatics. Both are avoiding rest at all costs.

This lasts about an hour, on average.

Bedtime can be maddening, and often leads to my wife and I texting one another increasingly deranged memes from opposite sides of the bedroom. We strategize how to tackle the mountains of laundry and dishes waiting downstairs. We complain about how long it’s taking these kids to drift off. How could they not want to sleep? All we want is a dang nap.

To the girls, though, we express a different message. “It’s not time for climbing, sugar,” we repeat, “Your body needs rest. Let’s take of your body.” We don’t want them to perceive bedtime as a punishment or rest as failure. Productivity may be the predominant religion of modern America, but it’s not the reigning power in this household. Quite the opposite.

My wife and I are very aware that our kids are going to grow up soaked in messaging that tells them to do as much as possible, regardless of what their bodies and minds are telling them. Productivity culture demands everyone workworkwork until they are burnt out, then collapse into a heap and commence feeling as guilty as possible for being unable to produce anything worthwhile. As though one’s simple existence was not miracle enough.

While we want our kids to work hard and get their dreams, we do not advocate for self-deprivation as a necessary part of that venture.

As an ex-Hebrew School teacher, I’ve seen and heard young voices express the stresses of modern culture too many times. Once, a fourth grader told me she hated having so many extracurriculars because “I don’t have any friends anymore.” Another time, I got chastised by my manager for allowing a fifth-grader to rest his head on his desk during a 9:00 am Sunday school class. The student had already attended a 5:30 a.m. hockey practice; later, he’d be continuing to private tutoring, and Lord knows what else.

My wife and I want to ensure our messaging to our kids is crystal clear: Your body needs rest. Not deserves — although it does — because we don’t want to imply some kind of transaction. We don’t have to do anything to need rest. We don’t get rest as a prize for being a Very Productive Person™. Nay, rest is an inherent human need and right.

By repeating these words mantra-like to our kids each night (“Your body needs rest” and “This is how we care for your body”) I’m hoping they’ll grow a protective hide, something to shield them from the world of side-hustles and industrialized existence.

I’m not the first person to think about this — many activists have been decrying the hustle ethos and declaring rest as an act of revolution for quite some time. Particularly, I owe this understanding to the work of Black women like Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, whose manifesto, Rest is Resistance, should be required reading and adrienne maree brown, author of the transformative Pleasure Activism (among other Very Important Books).

I absolutely believe these ideas are correct and necessary. Increasingly, I identify as an activist — by which I mean someone who is active in trying to build a world worthy of the beautiful little humans my wife and I birthed. I see this as an inherent part of my parenthood responsibilities: I am both preparing them for the world that is and attempting to build the world that can be.

I am also, however, working too hard. This is undeniable. Anyone who has spent more than 20 seconds with me at any time has heard me say I’m tired, because I am tired. All the time. This week alone, I attended an organizing meeting for Israeli-Palestinian peace activists, spoke at a local Board of Education meeting on behalf of local LGBTQ+ families, consulted a mom friend on a project to collect and publish essays by parents of trans kids, and trained a cadre of activists to edit great videos so they can help promote a message of co-created peace in the Middle East. While continuing to meet the mark at my regular 9:00-5:00 job at the digital library, adhering to my no-work-after-five rule, and caring for two rambunctious kids — one of whom was home sick¹.

This list, seen through the prism of modern society, seems like the kind that should elicit kudos. And, to be clear, I’m pretty proud of myself for the work I do. There is a loud, well-muscled voice in my head that’s yelling, “Tell them about the podcast, too!²”

Thankfully, I’m also able to hear the flapping of red flags above the commotion.

Like so many second-nature practices, the rise-and-grind ethos is also one I have to practice unlearning every day — maybe for the rest of my life. I’ve walked the path of constant work so often it has grooves that will take years to unfurrow. I’m not worried about this being a lifelong task. It’s a worthy one, especially if I can teach my daughters better, healthier ways of being.

Fundamentally, the productivity-at-all-costs way of life is grounded in a premise I want my girls to reject: One’s existence in the world requires justification.

I have spent many, many years believing this to be true. The months I spent recuperating from a concussion in 2013-14 were agony, both because of the vertigo and headaches and because I felt useless. I have been known to work 14-hour days, hop on a bus to run a show in a café, then get up early to run. I have ignored panic attacks, and physical pain, and red flags whipping in the wind — just to keep moving.

Respectfully, fuck that shit. I don’t want to do it anymore.

Besides the incredible writers above, I also credit this shift in perspective to my children. I think kids are inherently better at being present than adults — especially young ones, like mine. It stands to reason, right? They don’t know about mortgages, or deadlines, or world leaders who seem to have never developed a capacity for empathy. Therefore, when presented with flowers, children are more likely to stop and smell them.

In the pictures above, you can see Toddler smelling the azaleas outside our home and Big Kid climbing a flowering cherry tree because it happened to be there and was pretty. That’s basically a direct quote.

Big Kid and Toddler are teaching me presence by example. They’re also giving me something to aspire to — the ability to fully enjoy a cherry blossom because it’s there and it’s pretty. Also, just saying the mantras over and over every night has been unfurrowing the work-worn grooves in my mind.

I am working too hard, yes, but I know I’m working too hard. That’s something. I didn’t used to know.

I know I’m getting better at recognizing these patterns because yesterday, instead of finishing this essay, I took a nap. I know I’m improving my ability to be present because today, when playing with Toddler, I put my phone in the other room. I know I’m making better choices because every single project I’m working on is meaningful to me regardless of what the world thinks. I’m not performing utility anymore, I’m actually doing work that fulfills me.

And I’m taking naps when my body needs rest.

I know this isn’t perfect. It’s 11:20 p.m now, and I should be in bed. Soon I will be. I also know that perfectionism is one of the tricks used by hustle culture to keep us working instead of present, embodied, existing just to exist.

I know my tendency to work too hard is both part of the culture in which I live and a the wont of many ADHDers like myself. We do love a shiny, new thing to impulsively commit to and regret later. Yum. It just so happens that my neurology coincides with the world’s prevailing way of life in a pretty unhealthy way. Recognizing this proclivity helps, especially with the self-compassion necessary for unlearning.

So, I will give myself grace. Every day I will try to learn. I will try to rest. I will remind myself that my body needs rest, and this is how we care for our bodies.

Wishing you a shavua tov, a good week. I hope you smell some flowers, wherever you are.

Love,

Mikhal

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1. Fuckin’ croup.

2. There, I told them. Are you happy now, voice? Sheesh.