Friendship is how we get free ??

Hi community,

I'm writing to you today to do something stretchy: talking about Rewriting Our Rest Stories , an offering within the Collective?Rest universe that I dedicate to API women + femmes,?to give you a glimpse into how we get free through friendship.

Historically, I’ve felt weird or conflicted?“marketing”?RORS to the point of avoiding it until I absolutely have to do it... AKA right before launching enrollment for a new?cohort.???

I've told myself it's because it doesn't feel like it's?"mine"?to talk about.?Though it's true that I had the initial vision, brought it to life, and crafted, tested, and iterated on the curriculum that has since guided 32 API women + femmes to make meaningful strides towards embodying liberatory rest,?I genuinely believe our alumni are stewarding a bigger, collective, and intergenerational?vision?alongside me.?I also consider myself?a member of this community just like everyone else.

So who am I to put words to this? Right?

But as I've deepened into new layers of my own rest journey – which, at the heart of it, is a returning-home-to-yourself journey –?I am learning that I've been hiding?behind a specific flavor of Asian humility, the kind informed by growing up:

• Hearing my parents extol the glory?of sacrifice, struggle, and working harder than everybody else
• Hearing my family members brag about how much they could endure and how little they could get by on
• Having parents who criticized mistakes or failures more than they acknowledged or complimented successes or growth
• Watching the women in my family (my mom, aunties, and grandmothers) break their backs cooking, cleaning, caretaking, and going to work with little to no respect or appreciation from the men

One way that I'm working to shift out of this generations deep?cultural conditioning, which?I find rampant among my API friends, API clients, and API community, is to remind myself that I'm simply telling stories that are true.

When I recall how much I was suffering from burnout, depression, anxiety, and near-constant survival mode before?my rest journey – before I?knew liberatory rest?was possible for people who look like me – I reconnect with the longing that birthed RORS in the first place:?a desire to show my fellow exhausted and disheartened?API women and femmes that another way of being?is possible in this lifetime and that there is LIVING PROOF?from those who've walked the path before (our alumni!).

What the program has become?over the years is so much more than I could've imagined when?I first started dreaming?of it in 2020. What started as a group program has evolved into a living web of care lovingly dubbed the?Resties Village, with Resties being short for Restie Besties.

Born out of?the inaugural Winter 2021 cohort's fierce commitment to stay in touch,?the?Resties Village is made up of 32 alumni living around the world (mostly in North America with 2 folks in South Korea).?Once a quarter, we gather to meet new faces and cherish old ones, share updates, and support each other as we navigate real life situations that test our commitment to rest.

On Tuesday 8/6, I hosted our Q3 Resties Sleepover (yes, we call our Zoom hangs sleepovers because that's the vibe), which was the first one open to our newest grads from the?Spring 2024 cohort.?This one was?extra special because it was the first time we had 3 GENERATIONS represented in one place!!???

These sleepovers are a source of joy and connection, but there is a deeper purpose too. The "elders" of our community embrace the new generation, affirming that in this community, none of us walk alone. This helps to alleviate the anxiety that can come with transitioning out of the formal container of the program and nervousness that they will backtrack on our rest journeys.

When participants graduate, they lose the weekly accountability, consistency, and?structure provided by the program. After spending 4 months (un)learning, practicing being more in their bodies, and soaking up the?the rest-affirming vibes built into RORS' culture,?it's?now up to them to create the structure, boundaries, and time to?rest.

Because the modern world moves fast, it's easy to lose sight of our priorities given the distractions and plentiful pressures?to gogogo.?These?quarterly sleepovers offer an opportunity to check in and remember, with your whole body:

?? That you’re not alone or “crazy” for making rest a non-negotiable

?? That we all thrive in a rest-affirming culture, which intentionally counters the dominant paradigm, making it easier to refuse anything less

?? That we have people we?can be real with about the struggles to break cycles and the grief that comes with getting free?

?? That API women + femmes get to experience?self-trust, pleasure, joy, peace, confidence, and softness when we feel safe enough to slow down

Looking back as the person I am today, I?can access a genuine sense of pride without feeling like I'm taking up too much space or worrying about coming off arrogant. I am here to share my truth in hopes it serves someone else.?And my truth is that?I created RORS because the start of my rest journey was so lonely,?unbelievably difficult, and ambiguous AF.?

Okay, so I don’t want to hustle anymore, but then what?! ????

I had no role models, no container to hold me, no curriculum, and worse of all, no one else to figure it out with. But I had my somatic?training, community building experience, The Nap Ministry's body of?work, a love for API women + femmes,?and a stubborn hunger to claw my way out to something better.

One thing that makes RORS uniquely potent is it's?designed specifically to foster friendships. I have a theory that friendship is a hidden-in-plain-sight vehicle for freedom because having people who care about and invest in us?emboldens us to take risks and make changes. Liberation is risky business, y'all!

This community is a prayer answered because it wasn't just the participants who needed this. It was also ME?????

Collective Rest as a whole is what it is today because of the Resties' belief in this work and?willingness to share their ideas/feedback to help me improve. Knowing they're here for me and that they're doing their own liberatory rest work gives me the?the courage to do things like...

• Offer free Community Rest Sessions for YEARS, despite the entire wellness/coaching biz world judging /?looking down on offering high-value things for free = weak
• Facilitate?my edgy Rest in?Crisis & Change workshop to help people decolonize mind, body, heart, and soul for collective liberation as we face an increasingly fascist US government
• Guide?250 people at an all-staff retreat in group singing on stage for a Collective Rest @ Work client as someone who once hated the sound of her own singing voice

...?because as Maya Angelou so aptly put it, "I come as one, but I stand as 10,000!"

Enrollment for Fall 2024 will open on Monday August 19th. More storytelling to come, but for now, I hope this gives you a peek into the magic here, especially if you've been feeling like the journey to rest feels insurmountable.

Hint:?It's only insurmountable if you're trying to do it alone???

Enrollment for Fall 2024 opens Monday 8/19

A 4-month group program for tired API women & femmes to liberate themselves & their lineage from intergenerational cycles of burnout through rest

Explore the website for dates, pricing, features, testimonials, and more!

?? Lemme see! ??

Your Restie Bestie,

Cassandra Lam /?Lam Thùy Dung

Founder of Collective Rest