As part of our inaugural Year of Rest, we hosted a nearly 30-minute conversation on rest and resistance between public academic, writer, and lecturer, Rachel Cargle and advocate and organizer Omisade Burney-Scott.
Burney-Scott, a Year of Rest recipient, reflected on her time in nature with her 12-year-old son, who joined her on her Getaway.
After months of remote learning and work over Zoom, “my son and I were really keen to cook together,” she says. The pair brought a Star Wars cookbook and made all their meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner — from the recipes.
“We got to eat fireside — the specific experience of sitting outside in the dark with my son” was an unexpected moment, she says. “We talked to each other about the world and [I listened] to him express how he’s experiencing the pandemic, his concerns for what’s going on in the country, with our government.”
Cargle reflected on her first Getaway and how it helped sparked Year of Rest. “While I was there just walking on the grounds, I thought, ‘More people need this. More people need this moment — to be here, to be in themselves, and to breathe,” she recalls. “And literally, the next business day after I left, I called Getaway and said we need to partner.
“I’m so grateful for how it’s developed,” she continues, adding the importance of inviting “more Black people into these spaces to feel that stillness.”
Burney-Scott spoke of reimagining her relationship with rest. “The way that I have seen rest happen in my family — I never saw my mom rest, my aunties rest, my dad or my uncles,” she says. “They were always in a perpetual flow of some work…. If you’re not working, you’re being lazy.”
To shift the cycle, Burney-Scott wants to model rest for her children. “They need to see their mama resting not because I’m sick — because they’ve seen that — but as a prophylactic, as self-loving,” she explains. “A revolutionary, liberatory act is to rest because I want to be an elder. I want to be here a long time; I want to be healthy.”
Adds Cargle, “Our self-care doesn’t need to be reactive — it can be proactive; it’s still just as potent.”
Cargle continues that she’d like to include a message in the Outposts for the next group of Year of Rest recipients. “I’ve been told, ‘Rachel you do so much work for Black women,'” she says. “For whatever reason we don’t include ourselves in whatever it is we’re fighting for. I want to have a letter [in the cabins] that says, ‘You too deserve what you’re fighting for.'”
This year, thanks to our partnership with Mail Chimp we are thrilled to recommit to the Year of Rest by again providing another 365 free Getaways to those fighting for change for the Black community. Know someone doing the hard work who could use a night of rest in nature? Nominate them now.