What Does Rest Look Like in a Body That Hurts?

Rest is complicated for me.

It’s not just about slowing down. It’s not just about sleep. It’s not just about taking a break. Rest, in this body, feels layered. It’s tangled up with pain, with trauma, with the ways I’ve learned to survive. It’s wrapped up in the fear of stopping, the guilt of stillness, the pressure to keep going even when everything in me is saying no more.

This body has been taught to push. To override. To endure. To hold it all together even when it’s falling apart on the inside.

Living with chronic pain, illness, and disability means rest is not a luxury. It’s a requirement. But even then, rest doesn’t always feel accessible. It doesn’t always feel supportive. Sometimes rest feels like grief. Sometimes it feels like failure. Sometimes it brings up memories I’ve worked hard to outrun. And sometimes, rest just doesn’t come. My nervous system doesn’t know how to settle. My body doesn’t know how to soften.

I’ve spent so much of my life dissociated. On high alert. In fight or flight or freeze. So much of my story has been about surviving. And now, I’m learning how to stay. How to listen. How to even want to be here.

Rest doesn’t always look the way it’s portrayed in soft-lit wellness spaces. It isn’t always wrapped in cozy blankets and candlelight. Sometimes rest is choosing to say no when I’ve been trained to say yes. Sometimes it’s taking a day off and not just filling it with other tasks. Sometimes it’s turning the camera off in a Zoom space. Sometimes it’s lying on the floor and letting the weight of gravity hold me.

Sometimes rest is not about sleep at all. It’s about permission.

Permission to not be productive. Permission to not explain myself. Permission to need support. Permission to feel what I feel. Permission to let my body take up space exactly as it is.

I am still learning that I do not have to earn rest. That my pain is valid even when it’s invisible. That slowing down is not a weakness. That I am not lazy or broken for needing more care than others might understand.

Rest is resistance. Especially for disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and trauma-surviving bodies like mine. Choosing to rest is choosing to honor what capitalism and ableism tell me to ignore. Choosing to rest is a way of saying this body deserves care even when it’s hurting. Especially when it’s hurting.

And still, I have to relearn this every day. It’s not easy. But I am trying.

Trying to rest in small ways. Trying to soften where I can. Trying to believe that I don’t have to push through everything. Trying to trust that I am allowed to stop.

Even if rest doesn’t look perfect. Even if it’s messy. Even if it takes time.

May we all find tiny moments of rest in the ways that feel possible. May we redefine it for ourselves. May we let it be enough.