Project Parenthood

How to resist grind culture in your family

Episode Summary

What if we pushed back against the lie that we are “lazy” if we don’t want to work 24/7?

Episode Notes

March 13 is National Napping Day, and in honor of the call to get a little more rest, Dr. Nanika Coor shares insights from Tricia Hersey’s recent book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. You’ll hear about the importance of slowing down and resting, rest as a political act of resistance, the harmful messages American parents inevitably ingest about rest, and how parents may unintentionally pass those messages on to their kids.

Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.

Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.

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Episode Transcription

Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor—clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.

Inspired by the unofficial holiday National Napping Day—which is today, March 13!—along with Tricia Hersey’s recent book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, in today’s episode I’m talking about the importance of slowing down and resting. I’ll discuss the unconscious messages American parents can often hold about rest, how parents may unintentionally pass those messages on to their kids, and some ways parents might want to consider intentionally sending a whole different message instead. Stick around till the end to hear about creative ways to model self-care. 

In 1999, William Anthony, a psychologist at Boston University, along with his wife Camille, put out a press release establishing the very first “National Napping Day” in hopes of raising awareness of the benefits of napping. Celebrated on the day after daylight savings time begins, because people are at least one hour more sleep-deprived than usual, he figured it was a good day to celebrate the importance of napping. Most Americans, he thought, were sleep-deprived even without daylight savings time. He believed that, much like a lunch break, people have a legitimate need for, and should be given the opportunity to take, a nap break during the work day, as sleep deprivation has a negative effect on health, mood, performance, and productivity. Anthony’s napping initiative was also created in hopes of changing the negative perception of naps as something “lazy” people do.

Tricia Hersey, author of Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and founder of The Nap Ministry, takes issue with the perception of napping as a slothful or lazy act. Quite the opposite—she takes the stance that we as a society have grown way too comfortable with feeling burnt out, and that rest is and can be a protest against capitalism and white supremacy. She invites the reader to use her book as an invitation—a jumping-off point for inventive ideas for dismantling the oppressive systems that ensnare and harm us all. 

Hersey (also known as the Nap Bishop) founded the Nap Ministry organization in 2016 as a community project and Instagram page meant to spread the word about the ways that American society is conditioned to believe that “grind culture” is normal and that there is no time available to slow down—but this is a problematic lie by which we’ve all been purposefully brainwashed. It isn’t normal to be chronically sleep-deprived and exhausted and accepting of tiredness as a lifestyle. So what if we challenged the idea that our bodies are simply machines used for capitalism’s profit? What if we pushed back against the lie that we are “lazy” if we don’t want to work 24/7?

Her book pops into my mind again and again as I sit with New York City parents in my practice who are barely sleeping due to their high stress levels from trying to attain perfection in their careers, or their marriages, and their parenting. They can’t fall asleep or they can’t stay asleep—their minds racing with all of the ways they’ve not measured up that day and fearing the ways they won’t measure up tomorrow. They have chronically upset stomachs, churning with the stress of not doing enough. One of my tried and true “Dr. Coor-isms” is that you won’t be lying on your deathbed wishing you’d spent more time at the office. You’ll wish you’d been more connected to your loved ones and more connected to yourself. 

To that end, I’m diving into a few quotes from Hersey’s book that stood out to me as potentially helpful for parents who feel trapped in grind culture—and who just want a nap. 

“Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism.”

While Hersey’s Nap Ministry centers Black people, her message is intended for anyone who has been marginalized by or has succumbed to grind culture. She draws a direct line from the white supremacist enslavement of Black Africans and the commodification of their bodies for profit to modern day extractive capitalism and internalized grind culture.

American culture encourages and expects you to hustle—to grind—particularly if you want to live in some semblance of comfort. American capitalism teaches you overtly and covertly that every second of your life can and should be commoditized, and focused on profit and self-improvement. Even in lockdown during a globally traumatizing pandemic, you’re encouraged to become a master baker of sourdough and learn a new language. 

Internalized capitalism comes with a foreboding and urgent sense of scarcity and precarity that drives the idea that a neverending hustle is the only way to survive, no matter the cost to your health, comfort, or happiness. Alternatives to toxic individualism and exhausted disconnection are intentional interconnectedness and self-connectedness. An alternative is centering rest, slowing down, and refusing to grind. 

“To be colonized is to accept and buy into the lie of our worth being connected to how much we get done. Keep repeating to yourself: I am enough now.” 

When you wake up to the truth that you’re enough already—just because you exist—you’ve started the journey toward deprogramming from the belief that your worth is directly connected to your accomplishments and the money you accumulate. 

In my experience, many parents who do dare to try to listen to and honor their bodies often feel overwhelming guilt and shame about having done so. Unraveling all that you’ve swallowed about how productivity is everything is a lifelong practice, Hersey reminds us. There’s a lot to grieve. But a person has to connect to themselves to slowly make a space to grieve, and to repair, rest and heal—and grind culture wants you to believe that creating that space is impossible. Capitalism needs you to keep going no matter what. So you push yourself past the point of exhaustion and implicitly or explicitly teach your children to push themselves into hyper-productivity as well. 

A high schooler I know described the ways that kids at school compete to be the most sleep-deprived and exhausted—their overworking and perfectionism becomes a badge of honor. In my professional work with kids and teens over the years, I’ve never met a middle school or high school student who didn’t believe that their parents loved them more when they got high grades, and loved them less when they got lower grades. Parents are often mortified to learn this—because of course, they love their children regardless. They’re just socializing their children in similar ways that they were socialized themselves. It’s how culture is passed from generation to generation. 

“Wherever our bodies are we can find rest, ease, and liberation.”

Grind culture disconnects people from their bodies. People are praised and rewarded for ignoring their body’s need for rest and repair. People feel proud of coming to work despite illness, injury, or flagging mental health. Capitalism needs people to be distracted from their exhaustion and need for rest. Purposefully connecting your mind to your body is in itself an act of resistance. 

For Hersey, the act of resting is productive: it honors your body, gives your brain space to process, and it disrupts toxic systems. “Doing nothing” in this sense is actually doing a lot. So many parents believe that they need to earn rest—as if rest isn’t an actual necessity and a right!  Hersey sees the body as divine, a connector to one's ancestors, to the spiritual, to nature, and to the universe.

But if that’s too “woo woo” for you to wrap your mind around, remind yourself of the health factors. Physiologically, your brain needs to rest. Burnout and stress can give rise to serious health issues. Your body’s systems need to rest to be able to function properly. Hersey’s definition of rest is anything that slows you down enough that you can connect to your body and mind. For some people that’s dance, or yoga, a formal mindfulness practice, running, or simply “resting your eyes” for a few minutes. Practices like these are always available to you. 

“They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted by what is not real or true.”

In a culture of anti-Blackness, where Black bodies are seen as problematic, dangerous, shameful, and deserving of violence, Hersey argues that the sight of a Black body at rest—relaxing or napping—is shocking, radical, and liberating, and a tribute to enslaved ancestors who weren’t allowed to rest. She centers this image in her performance art and on her digital platforms. 

She is unapologetic in her belief that rest is not simply about self-care for Black Americans who are descendants of enslaved Africans, whose bodies were used for profit, who traumatically labored 20 hours a day to build the whole infrastructure of America while excluded from benefiting from it, and who the culture somehow paints as “lazy”. For Black Americans, rest is a revolutionary act of reparations that pushes back on that lie. 

But everyone’s body is viewed by a capitalist and ableist culture as existing for the sole purpose of making a profit. And any person can access silence and slowness, connect with their deepest ideas, and can daydream and imagine a new way forward that centers community, care, and liberation—even while oppressive systems continue to do what they do. Hersey reminds readers that any person can take a page from her Black enslaved ancestors and live in the system without being of the system. 

Even in a state of total dehumanization, enslaved people still found ways to make families, music, and art. They found ways to access joy and pleasure and even make plans to escape. Anyone can be inspired by that “freedom or death” kind of resistance and refusal. Oppressive systems may not be able to be overcome in your lifetime, but there’s hope in being able to respond to those systems in constructive and creative ways. Grind culture wants you out of touch with your body and addicted to work. If you weren’t constantly working, you’d be able to reflect. You’d be able to see that you deserve so much better than what’s demanded of your body. Hersey argues that being rested allows you to tap in to your spirituality, which, once replenished, allows you to imagine liberation and creative ways to get there.

You might think that you’re “resting” while you scroll through your social media, yet those platforms are meant to keep you buying and consuming. This is not Hersey’s imagining of rest. And though Hersey uses the term “rest,” she’s clear that she doesn’t only mean actual sleep. To her, resting is anything that slows a person down enough so that they can connect deeply to their mind and body. That could look like letting a call go to voicemail, saying “no” to one obligation too many, taking a month off of social media, or going to therapy to heal from your tendency to people-please. It’s going to look different for everyone. 

Practice makes progress

Instead of trying to do more, be more, and accomplish more, pushing yourself to the brink of destruction, Hersey invites us to just be. So this week, practice just being. Just rest.

Here are some suggestions: 

These are all ways to rest and to resist the grind. 

Let me know what you learn! 

You’re exhausted. You're spending your non-parenting hours working. You aren't spending time connecting with yourself or with your spouse or partner. You believe "there's no time for date night." You spend entire weekends running from kid activity to kid activity without any downtime. Because your kid has to get ahead, you feel you have no choice but to indoctrinate your child into the grind. Consciously or unconsciously, you teach them how to overwork and under-connect. You and your children are more than machines and you can reclaim your body autonomy. Downtime isn’t necessarily a waste of time. Prioritize your child’s downtime over their productivity. Let them take a mental health day. You take one too. 

For Hersey, the greatest oppression is believing there’s no way out of the grind. Instead of rest being something you’ll “get to” once your to-do list is finished (spoiler alert: it will never be finished), Hersey’s rhetoric of hope and possibility offers you the insight you need to start to resist the pressure of grind culture. She encourages you to do this in whatever imperfect and experimental way you can—and to take your time figuring it out. This is a resistance journey that will last a lifetime—there are no quick fixes. And by doing so, you’re modeling to your children a different way of going forward into their adult lives. Your children are learning more from watching you live your life than they are from you telling them how they should live theirs.

I had actually hoped to interview Tricia Hersey for this episode and emailed her to invite her on this podcast. What I immediately got back was an auto-reply, part of which said, “Please refrain from following up and circling back. I will be in touch as soon as my energy allows for it.” Her auto-message also informed me that she no longer participates in podcasts because they don’t “fit into [her] time management goals.” She signed off by inviting us email readers to “Trust the divine timing of our connection.”

Like, whoa. I read this email over and over again. I really learned something from her in that moment about the unapologetic setting of personal boundaries no matter what. Let the chips fall where they may, as she’s often quoted as saying. I was simultaneously deflated that I wouldn’t get to speak with her and delightedly impressed with the way she modeled self-care. 

What kind of model will you be for your children?

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I hope that’s helpful! You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and on Instagram at BKPARENTS.

If you have more questions about divesting from grind culture as a family or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  Catch you next week! 

Sources:

Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Hachette UK.

Noe, M. (2006, April 3). Close Your Eyes: BU prof reminds us that today is National Napping Day. BU Today. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2006/close-your-eyes/

Schwab, L. (2021). Rest to resist the grind: a critical rhetoric of Tricia Hersey's The Nap Ministry.