Rest Has Never Felt Safe: Reclaiming Rhythm, Devotion, and the Divine Play in a Chaotic World.

There are days I still catch myself holding my breath—shoulders tense, mind racing, body running on fumes—like the only way I know how to survive is to keep going. To outpace the exhaustion. To perform enough strength, enough grace, enough resilience to keep everything from unraveling.

Rest, for most of my life, hasn’t felt safe.

As someone living with CPTSD and ADHD, as a single mom raising daughters in a world that seems to demand more than it gives, and as a business owner trying to root in purpose while navigating global grief, climate change, capitalism, and chaos—rest has often felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford.

And yet, I’m realizing that rest—true rest—is not about escape. It’s not about checking out. It’s not about laying still and waiting for the world to get quieter.

It’s about recalibrating to what is sacred.

It’s a way of returning to myself, to the divine, and to the rhythm of the life I’m living.

It’s a devotional practice.

It’s a form of resistance.

Living Inside the Fullness

This past school year, our weekends were shaped by tournaments—nearly every single one. If you know, you know: up before dawn, packing snacks and water bottles and blankets, sitting in a gym or on a field for 8 to 10 hours, cheering, waiting, driving home, collapsing—and then doing it again.

And now?

Now it’s summer. And for those of us living in the lakes area, this is our community’s busy time. The season when everything opens, everyone returns, visitors pour in, and the calendar fills whether you want it to or not.

We’re in another rhythm.

Not school-full or tournament-full, but a different kind of full.

So here I am, standing in the truth that rest will not—and cannot—look the same every day, every season, or every cycle.

Rest Is Not a Static Thing

It changes with:

• The seasons of the year

• The seasons of your life

• Your menstrual cycle

• Your emotional capacity

• Your family structure

• The politics around your body

• The urgency of the world

Rest in February doesn’t look like rest in July.

Rest when I’m ovulating doesn’t look like rest when I’m bleeding.

Rest as a mom of teenagers looks different than it did when they were babies.

Rest in grief is not the same as rest in celebration.

Rest today might look like a walk. Tomorrow it might look like silence. The next day, it might look like saying no and disappointing someone.

Which is why we have to stop thinking of rest as a thing we earn or fail at.

Rest is a relationship. A rhythm. A remembering.

Rest, Dharma & the Divine Play

In yoga and spiritual practice, we talk about Dharma—our sacred purpose, our soul’s unique path. We also talk about Leela—the divine play, the spontaneous unfolding of life.

And lately, I’ve come to believe:

Rest is not the opposite of dharma.

Rest is how I align with it.

Rest isn’t a break from the divine play.

It’s how I participate in it with presence.

To live my dharma as a mother, healer, teacher, space-holder, and human being—I have to listen to my body, my spirit, and my cycles. And that listening requires rest. Not just physically—but mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

I recently began exploring the seven types of rest, not as a theory, but through the real-time lens of my life. And here’s what I’m learning:

The Seven Types of Rest (As I Know Them Right Now)

1. Physical Rest

Yes, sometimes it’s sleep. But sometimes, it’s a long hot shower where no one needs me. Sometimes it’s lying on the ground while my daughters chill. Sometimes it’s not working out because my body is asking for gentleness, not challenge.

2. Mental Rest

A moment to stop problem-solving. To not think through the next three things. Lately I’ve been practicing the sentence: “I don’t have to figure this out right now.” That one sentence has given me more rest than hours of sleep.

3. Emotional Rest

Letting myself cry. Letting myself not hold it all together. Being witnessed in my pain without having to make it poetic or inspirational. Emotional rest is the pause between feeling something and rushing to make it make sense.

4. Social Rest

Turning down the invitation. Answering the text tomorrow. Saying no without over-explaining. Choosing one deep conversation over five surface-level check-ins. Honoring when I just don’t have the energy to be “on.”

5. Sensory Rest

Walking into the woods with my phone on airplane mode. No music. No podcasts. Just birds, wind, and breath. My nervous system needs this.

6. Creative Rest

Creative rest is letting myself be inspired without needing to make something. It’s when I read poetry just to feel something. Or doodle without an end goal. Or sit in stillness and trust that ideas will come again.

7. Spiritual Rest

This one is sacred. Spiritual rest is the quiet knowing that I don’t have to do anything to be worthy of connection. That the divine is not waiting on me to hustle, perform, or prove. I can simply rest in being held.

Rest as Resistance, Rest as Revolution

If you’re someone who’s been made to feel that rest is lazy…

If you’ve internalized the voice that says you don’t get to rest until it’s all done…

If you feel like you’re failing when your body says “pause”…

I want you to hear this:

You are not lazy.

You are not failing.

You are practicing.

In a world that demands constant output, urgency, and performance—rest is an act of resistance.

Rest is how we say: My body matters. My cycles matter. My healing matters.

Rest is how we return to our inner rhythm.

Rest is how we come back to devotion.

Rest is how we remember that we’re part of something sacred.

An Invitation to You, and to Us

This summer, I’m not asking myself how I can rest more.

I’m asking: How can I rest differently?

More intuitively. More cyclically. More in tune with the moment I’m in.

And I’d love to ask that question with you.

So tell me—what does rest look like in your life right now? What are you longing for? Where does rest feel hard or scary or unreachable?

Let’s not perform wellness. Let’s explore what it actually means.

Let’s reclaim rest as a practice of community care, of spiritual alignment, of embodied devotion.

Together.