“I believe that shifting culture is necessary for systems change. Rest results in strength. Healing creates energy. Joy sparks creativity. Connection creates community. Dreaming leads to transformation. This is where the potential lies.”

Maria De La Cruz

Respite for Black Women (#r4Blw), a new Opportunity Fund initiative, has been underway since spring of 2022.  Inspired by local activists, Opportunity Fund board and staff invited a multiracial, multicultural, intergenerational group of local, national, and international individuals to ask questions, explore, and dream with Opportunity Fund about what it could mean for philanthropy to provide resources that fund the “right to rest” to Black women, in the full gender expression of that term. A flurry of questions emerged—from what does it mean for Black women to be funded to create a way of being that is accessible and considers the whole person? What does it mean to rest? Where does one go to rest? How do we in all of our complexities begin to visualize spaces for Black women and their families to simply rest and just be in their bodies? 

Housing security, having health and basic needs met, sustainable income, resources for building in community, communal healing spaces, etc., were named as core elements during the initial stage of our process. At the very foundation of these needs which are vital to our ability to rest is that of generational wealth. Racialization and legal discriminatory practices such as red lining were manufactured and designed to keep Black people from generating wealth. Closing this divide will not happen overnight, and is a multigenerational effort and multiracial commitment already underway. Black folks, Indigenous folks, and those in solidarity with us are recognizing that our rest is a right. 

Respite noun

: a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant.

Synonyms: rest, break, breathing space, pause, hiatus, stop, relief, relaxation, repose, breather, letup.

Oxford Languages

Rest noun

: a bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities

: freedom from activity or labor

: a state of motionlessness or inactivity

: peace of mind or spirit

Synonyms: breathe, catch one’s breath, take a breather, repose, lay, pause, sit, sit down, lie, recumb

Merriam Webster

Collectively, Black people have internalized the stigma around rest. Slavery and the Vagrancy Act of 1866 (now evolved into the prison industrial complex), a tool of continued systemic oppression arose out of the reconstruction era stereotyping  Black people as the lazy negro. Tracing this consciousness back to enslavement anywhere in the world, Black people were worked literally to death. Those enslaved did not have a choice but to work, and often for 20+ hours a day. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography states that enslaved people were whipped and brutalized for over-sleeping more than for any other fault. During enslavement, the slaveholder could begin to accrue interest on the babies of Black women because babies were valued as cash. There was no such thing as a Black child. Black women were “bred” and forced to nurse other women’s children and to deny care to their own. Violence targeting Black men left many families, particularly Black women, with the expectation to hold down the responsibilities of the home. Rest has not been an option. 

Stress on the Black woman is stress on the whole world. Healing that begins with the Black woman.

Not much has changed from enslavement in terms of how our economic system claims ownership of Black bodies for the purpose of profit. Rest as a practice should not be underestimated or undervalued. Black Dream Escape, a Pittsburgh, PA-based group, “educates individuals and the wider ethos about the overdue sleep and rest debt that Black and Indigenous people have been forced to accumulate.” Tricia Hersey, of The Nap Ministry reminds us, “Also, y’all are obsessed with the concept of productivity. We are not resting to be productive!!!! We are resting because it’s our divine and human right! Give up the ‘productivity’ angle. Get free. Deprogram!” Today, grind culture values a type of productivity that perpetuates a lie that work is synonymous with worth.

As Opportunity Fund continues to explore and build out this initiative to restore the “right to rest” to Black women, let’s acknowledge a generational wealth among Black women that is because it has to be – in terms of relentless output and energy – abundant, regenerative, purposeful, shared, and expansive. This is a generational wealth that often gets missed and overlooked.

We don’t know where we will land as we continue to ask questions and be guided by what is most important – the way we treat ourselves and one another. What we know is:

• The people having the experience must be centered.
• Dreaming sessions with Black women are essential to shift our relationships toward the world we say we want.
• When Black women have the power, resources, and autonomy to thrive, we will navigate our own reality and amass what we need to control our destiny.
• Black women’s agency and survival will be centered.

This is the job of philanthropy.