When Did We Start Needing Permission to Rest?
When Did We Start Needing Permission to Rest?
I was folding clothe
The house was quiet. The fan whirred. A pot was simmering on low. But my mind was loud. Louder than the peace I was supposed to be enjoying. Louder than the Sabbath I’d promised myself.
Still, I kept folding.
And somewhere between the last shirt and the matching socks, I caught myself asking a question I’d never asked out loud: “Who am I trying to impress with this exhaustion?”
That one question unraveled everything.
Because the truth is — I had been performing energy I didn’t have, in spaces I no longer belonged to.
I had been showing up in rooms that celebrated my productivity more than my presence. Rooms where you earn your worth by how much you can carry. Rooms where rest is treated like laziness, and burnout is a badge of honour.
But what if we’ve been honouring the wrong things?
What if I no longer want to enter those rooms?
Because I’ve learned rest is not weakness. And peace is not passivity. Stillness is not the absence of motion it’s the presence of intention.
There are rooms I no longer want to enter. Rooms where my softness is too loud. My truth, too inconvenient. My quiet, too unsettling. Rooms that demand performance over presence. Activity over alignment. More, more, more — even when your soul is begging you to be still.
I used to run into those spaces, thinking that being busy meant I was valuable. But now, I pause. I question. I ask: “Is this mine? Or am I just afraid to rest?”
And here’s what I know for sure: anything that requires me to abandon myself just to belong is too expensive.
So I sit. Not because everything is done. Not because the world has paused. But because I’m learning that the most powerful thing I can do in a noisy world… is be still.
To rest. On purpose. To choose ease. Without shame. To walk away from the pressure to always be doing, and instead start being.
This is me reclaiming what should never have been optional: my peace.
Do you feel guilty when you rest — even when your body is screaming for it?
Or have you walked away from rooms that once felt like everything?
Tell me in the comments. Your story matters here.
And if you’re trying to build something with truth at its core whether a message, a brand, or a blog of your own I can help you bring it to life with power and clarity.
📩 Reach out to minitemedia@gmail.com let’s tell your story beautifully.
This month, choose softness. Choose stillness. Choose peace and don’t ask for permission.
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