We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape

Escape from grind culture and dehumanizing systems with this visionary guide from the author of the New York Times bestseller Rest Is Resistance

We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation, and the unattainable call for perfection. The systems will never give us rest. It is something we must create for ourselves and each other.

Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing spiritual practice.

Inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets, We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations and poetry with storytelling and powerful art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy.

There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!

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Have you ever noticed
when you ask for rest
the body becomes a holy trumpet
the walls come tumbling down?