Last month, I submitted my executive MBA strategy project. It marked the end of a long journey, one that I carried all the while changing jobs, moving from one chapter to another without pause. Believe me when I say that doing both at once was intense.
When I imagined what would follow, I told myself I would take a month to celebrate and rest. Summer was still here, the sea still sparkling, the mountains still green. I pictured myself hiking, diving into saltwater, maybe even disappearing into the quiet of a mountain staycation. That was my idea of celebration: expansive, outdoors, shared with friends, a reward for the intensity of what I had just completed.
But when the moment came, all I could manage was my regular rhythm. Morning walks before work. Swimming on the weekends. Meals cooked with care. Time with family. And, recently, something that surprised me: I signed up for ballet classes. After twenty years away from the studio, I found myself pulled back to the barre, to the discipline and the joy of movement that shaped my teenage years.
It wasn’t the celebration I had imagined. And yet it was the rest I needed.
I sometimes wonder why it feels so hard to rest. Maybe it’s because busyness has always been my default mode. Even before my diagnosis, I kept myself moving. After it, busyness became both a shield and a lifeline: a way to prove to myself that I was stable, that I could catch up on the years I felt I had lost in my twenties to the cycles of mania and depression. In times of heartbreak and war, I buried myself in work. Productivity was how I coped, how I kept moving forward.
So when I stopped, even just a little, I could feel the old resistance rise up: the guilt of doing nothing, the pressure to stay useful, the fear that rest meant falling behind. It’s taken me years to learn that rest isn’t indulgence. Rest isn’t weakness. Rest isn’t something we earn by exhausting ourselves to the bone. Rest is necessary.
This month taught me that sometimes rest doesn’t look like a grand retreat. Sometimes rest is quieter: cocooning at home, saying no to what drains me, sleeping earlier, waking before sunrise to savor the stillness. Sometimes rest is play: cooking with love, letting my body rediscover the memory of dance, feeling boredom and realizing it, too, can be fertile.
Rest is also celebration. I didn’t know that at first. I kept waiting for a party, for the sparkling wine and fireworks that would somehow feel equal to the effort of completing a degree and starting anew. We did have a small family celebration with sparkling wine, quiche, and hugs all around, and it was beautiful, but it wasn’t the big gesture I had imagined. And maybe that’s the point.
Celebration doesn’t always have to be loud. Celebration can be a gentle honoring of where we are, a pause to breathe and say: I did this. I made it through. I am proud of myself. Sometimes, the most radical way to celebrate is to rest.
And when I gave myself that space, I found something I had forgotten: that I contain multitudes. That I am creative in body, mind, and soul. That I come alive when I play. That I deserve rest in all its forms. That I don’t need to earn it.
If I’m honest, I think this pause is also about what comes next. Rest creates a clearing. It makes space for the next thing to emerge. It’s not about being idle. It’s about preparing the ground. A month in, I feel lighter, more settled. I look back at what I accomplished with pride, but I also feel a quiet openness. I don’t know exactly what’s ahead, and that feels okay. Rest has given me the patience to wait for it to take shape.
What I’ve learned is this: there is no one right way to rest. We don’t have to force ourselves into someone else’s idea of what recovery, pause, or celebration should look like. Rest doesn’t have to be the yoga retreat in the mountains, though sometimes it might be. Rest doesn’t have to be sleeping for days, though sometimes it might be that too. Rest can be walking at sunrise, cooking a meal, saying no, dancing, letting the mind wander into boredom. And most of all, rest doesn’t have a timeline or a deadline.
Rest is personal. Rest is necessary. Rest is a radical form of love for ourselves, for our bodies, for the futures we are quietly preparing to step into.
So if you find yourself tired, drained, or carrying the weight of too much, let yourself rest in the way that feels good to you. Not the way you think it’s supposed to look. Not the way you imagined it would be. But the way your body and spirit are asking for in this moment.
Rest is not just recovery from what came before. It is a celebration of what you’ve lived through, and an invitation to what comes next.
I don’t know yet what the next chapter will hold. But I know I want to meet it from a place of wholeness, not depletion. And that means allowing myself to rest, fully and without guilt.
So I’ll keep walking at sunrise. I’ll keep swimming on the weekends. I’ll keep cooking meals that nourish me. I’ll keep dancing, even if I’m rusty, even if I’m just beginning again. These small acts are my way of honoring where I’ve been and preparing for what’s ahead.
There is no one right way to rest. There is only the way that feels true in this moment. And perhaps that is the deeper lesson: that rest itself is a practice of trust. Trusting that doing less can be enough. Trusting that quiet is also a celebration. Trusting that we are already whole, even as we wait for what will emerge.
Needed to read this🥰❤️🙏🏼