The major turning point that helped me progress in my rest journey

Growing up, I never saw the Asian women in my family rest.

Cooking and cleaning??Yep!?Juggling a full-time job with parenting or caretaking??Definitely.?Taking on an undue percentage of the labor that keeps homes and families together,?so that the men could just be... men? Ugh, unfortunately. (Can't get into this can of worms right now, but patriarchy in API culture is screams into the abyss)

Able to enjoy (or conceive of) leisure time? Feeling appreciated for who they were, not just what they could do for others??Believing that people would show up for them or that they could ask for help instead of muscling through?alone?

No,?they did not experience these things...

So when they inevitably got sick, made mistakes, or?fell short in the way that all of us do from time to time, they felt shame or embarrassment. As an adult, I?learned to respond to myself in the same way.

No one told me outright that I could not rest. Instead I did as they did.?I treated my body like a workhorse.?I judged people who seemed to succeed without working as hard or making as many sacrifices as I did. I felt bitter towards?people who seemed to float through life with ease and peace.?

Like them, life before my rest journey was marked by loneliness, low self-worth, emotional fragility (so wound up any little thing could break the dam),?and a refusal to be vulnerable.?I did not trust anyone to look out for me like I looked out for me.?Having so rarely seen anyone?in my family, but especially the women, receive gratitude, respect, or loving attention,?I could not imagine caring for myself... until burnout and a deep dissatisfaction with my life forced me to try something different.

Though I didn't set out on my rest journey to explicitly break an intergenerational pattern that runs through the women in my family, I learned that I cannot?separate my rest journey from them. Investigating?my own?warped relationship to my body led?me to tracing?the?origins of this unrest to my lineage and situating my struggle alongside theirs.

This unlocked a MAJOR turning point in my rest journey:?By contextualizing this?healing against a larger backdrop that could include and benefit the people who raised me, I felt committed and clear that what I was attempting?serves more than just me.

Whenever I tried to motivated myself to rest for MY benefit alone, I felt a lot of resistance. It was easy to give up, compromise, and fall back into old habits. My singular life was not inspiring enough for me to abandon hustle culture and take a leap of faith towards something as unfamiliar as rest.

If?you've been struggling to progress in your rest journey, I invite you to consider dedicating your rest journey to someone or something BIGGER than yourself.

This looks like connecting our individual struggles to those of others. Seeing ourselves as part of a greater web. Remembering that we belong not just to our families and friends, but to the Earth, the cosmos, and humanity as a whole. Understanding that your healing is never just YOUR HEALING because it can be shared?with everyone you touch.

Remember: we got here because of hyper-individualism. To heal, we're going to need to practice the opposite: relationship.

P.S. For?the API women & femmes who want to do this deep healing in community, I invite to join me for the Spring 2025 cohort of Rewriting Our?Rest Stories! This 4 month group program will provide you the tools, rest education, and inner work necessary to feel safe enough to slow down. Enrollment is open through Friday 3/7.

?? Learn more ??

?? Schedule a Connection Call ??

I created this program for?US because we deserve to feel all the things that slowing down makes possible: connection, intimacy, presence, joy, pleasure, and ease. Alongside values-aligned community,?you’ll explore how your family, identity & lived experiences impact your relationship to rest and build the somatic skills necessary to rewrite your rest story.

With so much up in the air, I'm not sure if I can commit to hosting a fall cohort so this is your chance!

Your Restie Bestie,

Cassandra Lam /?Lam Thùy Dung

Founder of Collective Rest