When I stumbled onto UMiami’s campus earlier this year, it was more out of obligation than inspiration. As a fellow in the Communications PhD Program, I was expected to show up, to be present and engage, but my mind was cloudy, and my spirit felt heavy. Earlier that week, I was laid off from the job I’d taken directly after graduating from the University of Florida’s Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. In a matter of moments, I had gone from a burgeoning non-profit professional contributing to the lives of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities to full-on survival mode. I was panicking, barely eating, distracted, disheartened, and unsure of how to make ends meet. As my peers, faculty, and student mentors offered words of encouragement and support, their words floated past me. I couldn’t help but think, I do not belong here right now. The thought of engaging and participating as a scholar felt like a form of betrayal—like I was abandoning the version of myself who was trying to survive for the scholar I had long suppressed.
This Pride month, I encourage my peers not to succumb to burnout or perpetually grind toward visibility but to embrace rest as an act of personal and political resistance and transformation.
As a care worker, HBCU alum, and Black Feminist scholar living and working in the South, legacies of racism, colonialism, and disenfranchisement remain deeply felt. Our current political climate only sharpens the blade of these injustices even further. Systemic oppression through various forms such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, and capitalism have long denied Black and queer folks to rest, safety and care. We often frame the Black Radical Tradition and struggle for liberation as cultural, intellectual, and action-oriented efforts. We must also make space for another kind of resistance: the slow, deliberate, and deeply necessary practice of rest.
Black feminist thinkers, such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and the Combahee River Collective, teach us that rest is not a retreat but a refusal. A refusal to be consumed by capitalistic notions of productivity. A refusal to abandon the body and soul in the name of performativity. A refusal to conflate worth with exhaustion and labor. This concept of rest as a refusal is a powerful tool in our fight against systemic oppression. It’s a way of saying ‘no’ to the forces that seek to exploit our bodies and minds and a way of reclaiming our humanity and worth.
I move through the world as a biracial, queer, nonbinary Southerner and a proud Spelman graduate. At Spelman, I was taught to equate excellence with relentless effort. In my current work supporting reproductive justice despite a hostile political climate, there have been countless moments where I’ve nearly become unraveled by fear, burnout, and the weight of care. Despite all that Black feminist frameworks have offered me; I internalized the belief that exhaustion was just the cost of the work. That suffering was proof of commitment.
It wasn’t until I lost my job and was forced to stop—forced to slow down—that I began to unlearn that lie. I started to reimagine what it might mean to prioritize my well-being over the performativity of productivity. I have come to understand rest not as a retreat but as a refusal to be rushed out of my own becoming.
Rest is transformative not only as self-care but as community care. When we draw upon Black queer feminist frameworks and mutual aid, we reclaim our time, imagination, and softness as tools for liberation, not as distractions from it. Our activism becomes more sustainable. Our futures more imaginable.
When we prioritize rest, softness, joy, and pleasure, we embody resistance. In doing so, we transform ourselves and our communities. It is in these moments of stillness, however brief, that we create the means to sustain ourselves and our efforts. We regain strength and fortify our sense of hope and purpose. We bloom.
Self-care, once a political imperative for marginalized people, has been co-opted and commodified into a product. The original intention of self-care, as a means of survival and resistance, has been distorted and diluted. But care cannot be bought. Rest cannot be branded. We must reclaim the true meaning of self-care and rest and utilize them as tools for our collective liberation.
As scholars, care workers, and queer people of color, it would serve us to pause and reconsider how we define resistance. What would it mean to honor rest and softness as political praxis in our work, our bodies, and our relationships?
Prolific Black feminist scholar, lesbian, and ancestor Audre Lorde once wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” I urge us to take that call seriously. Rest and self-care are not luxuries reserved for the privileged; they are lifelines for those who live and love at the margins.
I do not know what the future holds for me. Like so many queer people of color, I have faced uncertainty that has felt paralyzing. I do know that I am not alone. My friends, family, and comrades inspire me with their dedication to care work and mutual aid which is always informed by great feelings of love and reverence. The unwavering support of my peers and mentors within the Communications PhD pipeline has helped renew my hope and reignite my passion for scholarship.
This Pride, I envision a future where I continue to grow as a queer, Black feminist scholar and care worker grounded in a legacy of resistance that uplifts rest and collective liberation. Although my future is still taking shape, I am prepared for it, and I will meet it with open hands and an unshakable will to dream.
Bio:
Ebonee Brown (she/they) Ebonee Brown (She/They), a Spelman College alum and graduate of University of Florida’s Center for Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Ebonee researches Atlanta’s Trap music genre and intersections of regional Blackness, gender, and performance in popular culture. They are deeply committed to building liberatory futures through storytelling and strategy.
