Rest is Revolution by Briana Parlor

This year, the official first day of fall was September 22nd. This time of year always feels like a gentle reminder to slow down and turn inward. The intentionality of fall is reflected in how the trees release their leaves. In the Northern Hemisphere, the autumn equinox invites shorter days and colder weather. As a means of survival, our tree friends shed their leaves to conserve energy, protect themselves from the harshness of winter, and prepare for the next growing season. Each year, we bear witness this intimate cycle of slowing down, letting go, and turning inward. In the same way that trees surrender their leaves, nature calls us to put down our toil and rest.

Fall tends to make me more sensitive, introspective, and reflective; a personal trinity of needs that always leads me to my place of rest. In my professional life, I’ve been collecting the stories of birth workers, particularly Black female birth workers, of whom I am one. I ask them to share how they recover, rest, and return to themselves after birth. Their narratives echo the same themes of slowing down and letting go. Through them, I’m learning that rest is more than a revolution. For Black women, rest is a reclamation of our humanity.

Many of us carry the weight of expectation on our shoulders and take on, with grace, the entitled requests of the world. We are expected to show up fully, give wholly of ourselves, often without end, and to do it all graciously. Yet resilience can take on a bitter taste for Black women. It only remains palatable when their outstretched hands are met with offerings of love, support, and care. But what happens when those hands return empty?

My hope for Black women this fall is that we give ourselves permission to rest. You deserve it. I

deserve it. There is an ancestral reckoning that occurs when we allow ourselves to rest in ways

that truly honor our needs.

The revolution doesn’t begin with headlines or hashtags, it begins when we grant ourselves

permission to be so full of ourselves that the world must learn to survive on our leftovers. And of those, we will happily share.