Sisters, pull up a chair. Sit close.
I was live in a conversation with Tecca | The Rested Black Woman for her very first Substack Live, and baby, we went there. Soul on the table, no performance. So let me pour a little of that medicine right here, because rest isn’t a wellness buzzword you slap on a Sunday. For us? Rest is a raw commitment. A birthright. And some days, the only reason we’re still standing.
Why Rest Feels So Hard — Especially for Us
We opened with breath. Tecca calls it a “soft rebellion,” and I felt that in my chest. A few deep inhales. Eyes closed if you were brave enough. Right in the middle of whatever chaos the day was serving. That’s the whole practice. Nothing fancy. Nothing you have to earn.
So why does something that simple keep hovering just out of reach for Black women?
One word: obligation. And I don’t mean the emails and the to-do lists. I mean the bone-deep, handed-down kind. The kind that whispers you must do for everybody, or else. I know it intimately. I was the hyper-responsible Capricorn eldest daughter. The tech queen bouncing from NASA to Verizon to Intuit. Single mom. Serving and serving and serving until the machine in me just… shorted out. My body kept the receipts because my reproductive system shut down in my teens from stress, then went full early menopause at 32.
Sound familiar? Too many of us hit that same wall. And then most of us do the unthinkable — we get up and keep crawling.
The Radical Selfishness of Self-Devotion
Can I be honest with you? Like, really honest?
To come back to myself, I had to swing the pendulum all the way over to something I now call radical selfishness. Let me make it plain: I started putting myself first. And at first it felt villainous. Like I’d failed the assignment of being “the strong one” everybody leans on.
But here’s the alchemy. My overflow became the offering. I stopped giving from an empty cup, from depletion, from guilt. I fill myself all the way up first and if there’s extra, I share it. If there’s not? The world does not end.
That’s what self-devotion is to me. Not a spa day. A relentless, daily, moment-to-moment choice to check in with myself first. What do I want? What do I need? What actually feels good in my body right now? And then I only hand the world what’s truly overflow — never my essence, never my survival rations.
When You Stand in Rest, the World Has to Adjust
Let’s get real about the fallout, because it’s real.
Some people will call you selfish. Distant. A disappointment. You might lose relationships that were only ever feeding on your old self-sacrifice. I won’t sugarcoat that part. When I went no-contact with family who couldn’t respect my boundaries, I grieved. Hard. And then? I bloomed.
Because here’s what nobody tells you: the right people learn a new way to approach you. You start hearing friends open with “Hey, do you have capacity?” — Tecca named that one, and it’s such a green flag. A whole new community gathers around the you-centered you. Not your usefulness. You.
The Phases of Rest (Spoiler: It’s Not a Straight Line)
Rest is not linear. It’s not neat. It is not Instagrammable.
First comes the collapse when your body and spirit say no more and you crawl into bed just to survive. Then recovery, when your nervous system slowly exhales and starts to trust that you won’t abandon yourself again. And if you stay the course, overflow is where rest stops being a thing you do and becomes who you are. A guiding principle. A gut check before every yes and every no.
And then it loops. You’ll revisit old phases, because life is layered and healing was never a staircase. The world will keep trying to yank you back into grind culture. But here’s the thing, once you’ve tasted overflow, crumbs never taste right again.
Rest as Spiritual and Collective Rebellion
Rest is resistance. Rest is a portal.
When you finally slow down, maybe for the first time in your life, you start hearing the divine whispering underneath all that static of obligation. This was never really about naps and spa moments (though listen, I love a good spa moment). It’s about having the nerve to center yourself. To let your overflow be the gift, and stop handing over your lifeblood.
Your Message Needs You to Rest
So many of us are carrying medicine. Art. Stories the world is genuinely starving for. And tech overwhelm and burnout try to rob us of that voice before it ever gets out.
That’s exactly why I braid tech strategy together with self-care helping women, especially in wellness, build the digital systems that hold their vision without frying their nervous system. Your systems should hold you. Not the other way around. If you’ve got a message for the world and the tech is blocking your flow, come find me. We’ll alchemize that too.
The Money Wound: Healing Past Survival
We also touched the money wound. And whew.
That “math ain’t mathing” stress isn’t always about income. Sometimes it’s about what we were told we deserve. What we were told was even possible for us. And those stories don’t disappear the second you leave the job or “regulate” your nervous system; they linger. Liberation is layered, baby. We get to notice these stories, sit with them, and release them. One nervous system pause at a time.
Rest Is the Beginning, Not the End
Leaving survival mode isn’t the finish line. It’s the next door.
Healing, softness, boundaries, and overflow does not happen in a vacuum, and you will not always be applauded for choosing it. Do it anyway. Radical rest is possible. It’s necessary. And I’m walking it right alongside you.
Want support? Slide into my DMs. Join the Self-Care Oasis. Grab the Black Women’s Self-Care Bundle. Or save your seat for the next roundtable. Your very next breath can be the start of your own soft rebellion.
Keep coming home to yourself.
With love and radical softness,
Samantha Gregory
Self Care Alchemist & TechWellness Consultant
P.S. Thank you The Celebration Chronicle, Joy Oladele, Ann-Marie Sampson (Coach Anno), Safiyyah, SimplyTayanta, and many others for tuning into my live video with The Rested Black Woman! Join me for my next live video in the app.
