Welcome to Mother’s Gonna Work it Out – a newsletter not just for mothers with children, but for everyone who cares for anyone.
When was the last time you felt truly, deeply rested? If the wall-to-wall coverage of war and fury, and headlines like ‘How burnout broke Britain’ are anything to go by, it sounds like everyone needs a nice big sleep.
In her column in last weekend’s FT, Enuma Okoro writes: ‘I imagine many people would confess to being exhausted — as would I, even if it feels strange to admit it. Mine is not an exhaustion that keeps me in bed and prevents me from doing the day-to-day things I need to do. Rather it is one that seems to keep my body a little off-kilter, my mind a little hazy, and challenges my ability to be fully present in ways I need and want to be. It is a deep exhaustion that will not be resolved by 10 hours of sleep (though I wouldn’t mind a chance to test that out).’
What she describes sounds a lot like how it feels to look after a tiny baby. I remember the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch – if I could sleep at all. And all that unhelpful advice to sleep when the baby slept… When else would I have the time to wash the baby sick out of my hair, hang out the washing, and maybe eat a piece of toast?
Sleep and rest, however, aren’t necessarily the same thing. What I’m learning is that the magic lies in the switch from doing to being. In one of his 10-minute daily meditations this week, neuroscientist Sam Harris described this switch as creating an island in time for doing nothing other than just paying attention. If it’s not a 10-minute meditation, then it could just be closing your eyes for a moment. This image of an island really resonated, especially when you’re knee deep in everything else that’s going on.
For Tricia Hersey, the self-ordained Nap Bishop, these islands in time hold a transformative power. Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organisation that explores how rest is an act of resistance. In this talk, she explains that capitalism wants our bodies to be machines – and that rest is a reclamation of our space. ‘The systems don’t want us to rest,’ she says. ‘Everything is centred in urgency. Rest pushes back on the ideals that capitalism is built on – that we don’t own our bodies, and that they are there to be pushed to their limits.’
The Nap Ministry organises collective rest sessions, where people come together to switch off. ‘We have to make space for others to rest, as well as ourselves,’ she explains. ‘From rest comes care and connection. We won’t change course if we continue to come from a place of exhaustion. You disconnect from your body when you push through tiredness.’
This idea of collective rest brings to mind composer Max Richter’s eight-hour opus Sleep, a piece of music he calls ‘my personal lullaby for a frenetic world – a manifesto for a slower pace of existence.’ I haven’t yet made it through all eight hours – I struggle to keep my eyes open, which is, I hope, the point. To be a little more asleep, to be a lot more awake.