Ep 78: Why Rest (When the World’s On Fire) Feels Restless

Have you noticed that in all 78 episodes since 2021, I’ve never asked you to rest? At least not right away. That’s because you and me and other caregivers aren’t just tired. We’re also heartbroken. We’re wounded in our conscience – we’re morally injured – from living in a system that forces us to choose between our values and our safety. Rest certainly helps with exhaustion. But to tend to our moral injury- the wound that’s inflicted when our actions betray our values- we have to re-align with our values. And we can do that by taking one tiny aligned action. To say it a different way, before you rest, re-align with your values in one tiny action first. In this episode, you and I will step back and look at the barriers that get in the way of you showing up as the parent you know you can be. Then, we’ll explore one thing we can do at home with our children to break through this barrier and move towards collective liberation together. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started.

[OPENING]

Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

I’m going to state something that you already know deep in your bones. Under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy, these two things are at odds with each other: a) what you need your child to know to survive and b) what your child needs developmentally to thrive. You might need to make sure your child knows how to fit in and codeswitch. But also your child just needs to be who they authentically are. You might need to make sure your child knows how to persevere, push through, and produce. And your child just needs to play, explore, be in awe with nature. You get the idea.

Not only that. Surviving under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy leaves you with very little energy to be intentional in how you raise your child. You come home so tired that you’re easily triggered and irritated by your child’s bid for connection. Then, you snap and scream at them. 3 AM comes along, you’re still up scrolling to find better, research-based strategies to adjust your mindset, set strong boundaries, or use “game-changing parenting hacks” (ooph, I just threw up in my mouth saying that). Putting food on the table while making sure your child knows how to stay safe from police brutality while breaking your family cycles while waiting until your before-bed shower to rage cry because of the 78th-anniversary commemorations of the Nakba…these non-stop acts of violence are intentionally designed to exhaust us. So that we forget the context. The context that you are not failing as a parent; you’re parenting in a system that fails to give you support. You’re trying to love your child as best as you can under a system that never loves you back. You’re constantly gaslit into believing that you’re powerless and then gatekept from building power with your co-conspirators.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, it’s easy to forget to connect the dots between militarization in Gaza and police brutality in our neighborhood and policing of our children in our own homes.

When you see the dots of colonial violence connecting, compassion in your heart is activated. Do you feel the desire to do something to alleviate suffering arising in your body? Right? So what happens to this energy of compassion when you suddenly go lay down on the couch to rest? Can you actually rest in a way that you actually feel recharged and restored after?

Many caregivers have shared with me that when the world’s on fire, resting feels like a cop out. It feels like turning away from suffering. Then, anxiety turns into shame. For me, when I shortchange my desire to enact compassion by resting right away, I often hear my inner critics loud and clear should-ing all over me, telling me that I could be emailing the state representative instead or I could be doing X, Y, and Z instead. Rest becomes restlessness.

Many caregivers also shared that when the world’s on fire and every social media influencer is telling them to breathe and regulate their nervous systems, regulation feels empty. It feels like regulating our rage, our pain, and our grief so we carry them gracefully for other people’s comfort. We regulate ourselves into docility and obedience so we can continue to uphold the power structure.

To be fair, you know your body. If you need rest, rest. I, too, believe that rest is resistance like Tricia Hersey teaches. If you need to regulate your nervous system so you’re not spiraling, please do. But rest and nervous system regulation can’t be solutions to all problems when the world’s on fire. Today I want to make a distinction between exhaustion and moral injury. Our responsibility is to pick the right medicine for the right wound. If you want to address exhaustion, rest. If surviving white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy is making you break your own heart because you’re not aligned with your values, then rest isn’t the medicine. Rather, re-aligning with your values by taking tiny aligned actions is the medicine.

For the majority of the families in our community who really care about liberation and can’t afford to fall apart, what seems to feel really generative is tending to moral injury first, then tending to the exhaustion. Or, “first re-align, then rest”. Let’s talk about what that actually looks like.

One way to exercise aligned actions with our children

The heart of this invitation is to first take one small aligned action. Then, savor it. Get your flowers for the aligned action you just took- no matter how small it seemed. And please smell those flowers too while you’re at it. Let the emotional satisfaction from that action fill your cup. Let your body catch up with your integrity.  After that, you decide whether rest is next or another action with your co-conspirators is next. So, it’s taking one aligned action, savoring it, and moving on with dignity.

For us caregivers, let’s feed two birds with one worm: aligning with our liberatory values and modeling our liberation for our children. If you’d like, you can take that aligned action in everyday parenting by shifting from power-over to power-with with your child. In Raising Change Agents, the Social Justice Parenting Playbook framework offers you three ways to power-with with your child: collaborate, participate, and scaffold. You can choose your own adventure. Then, instead of moving on to your next item on the to-do list, savor. You did that. You walked the social justice walk with your child. You practiced abolishing the police in your head and in your home. You didn’t just practice regular abolition, you made that abolition intergenerational and fractal too. Yes, it won’t end the violence in the Middle East. No single action ever will. But you know that filling your cup so you can stay in this liberatory work in the long run is a strategic move. It’s okay to savor this for three more breaths. Then, when you’re a little more centered, a little more rooted in your dignity, what’s next? Rest? Bringing food to the neighbor? Emailing mutual aid meeting agenda for everyone to co-create? Whatever your next steps are, they’ll unfold from your dignity and discernment instead of the need to go, go, go, and do, do, do just to be a martyr.

[CLOSING]

Thank you for tending to your exhaustion and your moral injury intentionally by picking the right medicine for the right wound. Please rest when you’re tired. Please re-align with your values in your everyday parenting when you’re morally injured. Then, bring all of your brilliance to your co-conspirators as you take direct, collective actions together towards liberation. We share power with our children then we build power with other families in the community. And we do it again and again. That’s how we raise change agents within ourselves and within our homes together.

Raising Change Agents: Practicing Social Justice in Everyday Parenting is available now everywhere you buy books. If finance is tight, this podcast is a free resource for you to DIY your social justice parenting practice. Please choose your own adventure. I cannot thank you enough for being here and being you.

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.