When rest is resistance

Part three of a quiet series I’m sharing — letters that tell the truth of where I’ve been, and how I found my way through

Slowing down has always been a core practice for me.

It’s something I teach. Something I model for the women I work with.
Not as laziness, or weakness, or pause-before-you-bounce-back… but as strategy. As sustainability. As leadership.

I’ve sat with clients — women leading global initiatives — and said to them, “Slow down. Nothing good happens when you’re in overdrive.” And I meant every word.

But after Benjamin died, I didn’t know how.

Not because I didn’t believe in rest — I did. I do. But because the version of rest I had known… no longer fit. The rituals that once grounded me felt hollow. The silence that once soothed me now echoed with absence.

Before, slowing down meant recovery. Regulation. Space.
But now? It felt like falling into a void.
There was no rhythm to return to.
No version of me waiting on the other side.
Just a vast unknown.

And underneath it all, the urgency was still there.

I felt I owed it to Benjamin to keep going. That his legacy — and mine — depended on it. That I had to continue this work with the same fire, the same presence, the same relentlessness that had carried us both for so long.

I wasn’t just holding space for my clients.
I was holding their missions.
And those missions felt like life and death.

So even though my body was begging me to stop, I resisted. I told myself:
This is bigger than me. I’ll rest later.

Until the later didn’t come.

And my body — wise as ever — began to shut me down.

I cancelled meetings. I lay in bed for hours, unable to explain why.
I turned off my phone. I left whole days empty.
Not as an act of rebellion. But because there was no other option.

That was when I began to rediscover rest.

Not as a return to the old rhythm.
But as a question: What does rest look like now?

It came through new layers.
Cranial sacral therapy. Trauma massage. Gentle movement.
Empty space in my calendar — guarded, sacred.
Long walks. Late mornings. Stillness, not as strategy, but survival.

And over time, rest stopped feeling like betrayal.
It started feeling like truth.

I’m sharing something special in these letters — not lessons, not strategies, but the lived experience of rebuilding from the inside. Because I know so many of you are holding legacies. Carrying missions. Navigating grief while still showing up.

And maybe you’ve also reached that point where your old ways of slowing down don’t work anymore. Where the version of rest you used to know… doesn’t fit this season.

If that’s you, I want to say this:

You don’t need to go back.
You get to ask what’s true now.
You get to rest, even if you don’t yet know who you’ll become on the other side.

Thanks for reading.

Love,

Rita

Ps. If you’re ready for a steadier, deeper way of leading, I offer private 1:1 thinking partnerships for leaders building what matters most. When you’re ready, the space is here. If it feels like the right time, message me and we’ll have a quiet conversation.

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