Say yes to rest, even in this
By Markasa Tucker-Harris
As another busy election year is upon us, I want to challenge us not to bury ourselves eyeballs deep in the vicious electoral cycle. I want to challenge us to shift our mindset to fight–and rest. Fighting with no rest can leave us weary and cause us to possibly miss liberation altogether. I want to take you all on a journey of me saying yes to rest while I fought.
April 2024 made 10 beautiful, amazing, and exhausting years of movement work, and December 2024 will make 13 years of organizing work in the city of Milwaukee. In 2023 I not only continued to say yes to both, but I also finally said yes to a more rigorous practice of rest. God spoke a transformative word to me in 2019 and as I surrendered to His word towards trusting Him and rest, and I began a practice that has carried me over the last year or so.
One way I accepted God’s divine invitation was through Windcall Institute, which offers transformative healing programs for movement organizers and leaders. I had been invited to apply by Brenda Coley and Rebecca Katz several years back after I began supporting Dontre Hamilton’s family, a Black man who was murdered by police in April 2014. This was also shortly after I started to formally lead the African American Roundtable (AART). I may not have even responded to Brenda’s email, but I remember looking over the application and thinking I didn’t have time to apply or be away from work for one week, let alone three weeks which was also an option when I almost considered applying. Looking back I remember almost every year thereafter, she would share the opportunity with me. I continued to allow the invitations to apply to pass me by as I lived by the grind culture mantra. Tricia Hersey calls the grind culture, “a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism.”
In April 2022 I was contacted by Brenda Coley yet again, and this time she shared more details about her experience as a Windcall 3-Week Cohort resident. She said, “Markasa I had a chance to spend three weeks in paradise.” She went on to say it was a transformative experience for her, and when she arrived at her location, she slept for three days. In 2022 I made space for this invitation and decided to set aside my to-do lists and project plans and block off some spacious time on my calendar to reapply. Yes, reapply because in 2021 I tried applying and missed their deadline after experiencing what I thought was one of the busiest periods for me as the leader of AART. Not only was I transitioning our organization, but God was allowing a transition in my thinking. In 2021 I took on the tall task of transitioning our program to a fiscal project.
What finally got my attention and gathered me by my edges was a powerful word God spoke to me, “Rest is your most powerful position Markasa.” This transformative word He gave me was not completely unfamiliar, as it was in perfect alignment with what I had been taught as a child in church. Genesis 2:2-3 in the The Passion Translation reads, “By the seventh day, God has completed creating His masterpiece, so on the seventh day, He rested from all His work.” Out of all the things God chose to do, He chose to rest and invited me to do so as well. I thought, “God, do you not see all of the things I have to do on my multiple to-do’s as I wear multiple hats including wife, mother, daughter, minister, executive director, and the list goes on?” His answer didn’t change, and I would not fully walk into this practice until I hit the red dirt of Mississippi after being awarded a one-week breather. By the way, they recommended me for their three-week cohort, but I just didn’t see a path forward to do that at that time.
In 2022 I got a call back from Windcall and began to prepare for my breather through Zoom calls with their staff. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but they prepared me and other participants with guides on how to prepare and get what we needed during our stay. Through those prep calls, I was able to choose from a list of locations, and I chose the Fox Fire Ranch located in the red clay hills of North Mississippi, at the foothills of the Appalachian Trace on the fields and rivers that are the ancestral homelands of the Chickasaw Indians. Mississippi is like home for me as both of my parents were born and raised there, and I spent many summers there with my grandmother and cousins.
Although I won’t get into all the details of what I experienced during my one-week breather, as those moments were sacred, I will share that I connected with the third-generation Black family land owners who were amazing hosts. I stayed on their land in the Sun House cabin and soaked up beautiful rays of sun while basking in God’s creation. Some days I laid around and slept like Brenda, no television, no social media, and no work!
What I want to share more deeply about is the harvest of my yes to God’s divine call of rest.
My saying yes opened the door for other Black women to say yes to rest. Before my trip, my curiosity piqued and I ordered Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance’s book and invited Black women to join me in reading the book and creating a rest space once a month to explore it together. One said, her life is so much better because of the intentionality to rest. Another said she is intentional about working to the point of being effective and not exhausted.
I learned to more deeply trust God with all the things. Rest is my most powerful position because I’m trusting, relying, and leaning on Him and His power and not my own strength. All the work and things that I could be doing during my time of rest don't equate or hold a candle to what my obedience yields.
Delegating more and trusting my staff and board supports my rest. When I unplugged for that week I had intentional conversations with staff and board that I would not be working at all. They likely didn’t believe me, as I’ve often gone on vacation or taken off work and worked. This was an opportunity to practice trusting the leaders I’ve poured into, the muscles of delegating and completely unplugging. Unplugging continues to be a growth edge for me, and I hold myself with compassion as I strive for more of it. This was also an invitation for my staff to step more deeply into trusting their own leadership skills and take on deeper levels of responsibility in my absence.
This experience has created a greater level of ease in sharing my boundaries with others, whether family, staff, or friends. One commitment I made at work included me not taking on the load of managing any other staff. I had several conversations with staff to ensure they knew where I stood and that meant they would have to expand their leadership and capacity to support the growth of our organization. At home, my husband has supported my rest by encouraging me to rest, helping to cook, and taking on additional household chores.
I’m modeling rest almost daily for my 16-year-old daughter, staff, and others in the movement. One specific practice includes 15 minute rest breaks on my calendar Monday throughFriday. This can look like me lying down, coloring, or me noticing and being in awe of God’s creation. My practices continue to grow stronger, whether I’m leaning into physical, mental, sensory, creative, social, spiritual, or emotional rest. Tricia Hersey is also known as The Nap Bishop, and she reminds me, ”You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.” I say yes to that and so has my staff, as I see more scheduled breaks on their calendars!
I have unsubscribed to false urgency, including funder deadlines. When I came back, I had a deeper curiosity about the deadlines and the urgency I or others tied to them. In moments I had to remind myself I was allowed to miss a deadline if needed. If nothing was life-altering that would shift because I slowed down enough to ask for what I needed, grace or an extension, then I did. Instead of subscribing to false urgency, which is depleting and brings no rest, I am requesting extensions, taking rest, and giving myself grace.
I have dropped mantras like, “We will rest when we’re free.” This is an unsustainable model of fighting with no rest. If we teach and model this for generations to come, we may all miss our freedom. Not only is rest healthy, it’s also necessary and undergirds our fight for freedom.
In my application, I said, “What does it truly look like to work from a place of rest?” I still ask myself this question and take time to feel and notice. What did it feel like when you rested? What was added to you when you did? How did others benefit from my resting? What was taken from you and others you’re in community with when you were not working from a rested place? So I ask you, even if you can’t take a week breather, what would it take for you to work from a place of rest? What would suffer or who would suffer if you continued at your pace? When we say yes to rest for ourselves, we invite others into deep healing justice of communal care.
Liberation work doesn’t just call us to fight and be busy changing the conditions on the ground; it calls us to lie down and change the conditions of our minds, gaze at God’s creation, set down our phones, walk away from the tasks and to-do lists, and simply rest. Election season or no other season is worth your wellness. Resist and say yes to this divine liberation practice alongside me and others who are choosing to rest and fight. We have nothing to lose but our chains.