Rest is Not Resistance, and That is OK: On Cancer, Grief, & Audre Lorde

I received a call around 11pm the night my Gramma died. Immediately I knew what the buzzing on my nightstand meant for my world from then onward. That knowing prevented me from answering the phone. One, I wanted to hold onto my grandmother for one more night. Two, it meant that I would have to calculate how much time I could afford to take off without overdrafting my PTO bank—one day for sure but two might be pushing it, I thought—which was a task that my spirit rejected outright. That night, and in the days that followed, grief brought me face to face with the realization that what i needed after my Gramma's passing—time for myself, rest, connection to others, connection to nature, connection to ritual—had been, at worst severed, and at best rendered anemic, by capitalism. I did not choose not to rest. I was robbed of the possibility of even making that choice by a system that necessitates the maintenance of two things: my (return to) labor, and my perpetual exhaustion. Therein lies t

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• McKane Andrus