An Adult Gap Year

A year of radical rest, reflection, and choosing myself while I’m still here

Among the 300,000 Black women laid off last year there is me, wone of more than 200 people who showed up to work on payday only to be told our nonprofit had run out of money. Just like that, the ground shifted.

I was forced to pivot before I was ready.

I wrote about this experience that myself and many other black women have experienced and how rest and recalibration is a desire but not a reality over on @Blackstack in my article entitled “What Black Women Do With What Didn’t Work”

Last night I decided what I will do: I am taking an intentional break, a grown woman gap year if you will.

This is part manifesto and part experiment.

What would it look like to actually rest, to have time to think, to have space to plan my next move before having to move?

Is it truly possible to denounce grind culture and live a soft, slow life as a Black woman?

I not only believe it is possible I am calling on the village to support me in making it possible.

Too often we watch people struggle, survive by a hair and call it resilience. This is especially true for Black women who are 3x more likely to die from a stress related illness. But it’s time for that to change.

I am crowdfunding $100,000 to support a year of rest, reinvention and reclamation.

I will be documenting the journey of radical rest through writings and documentary style video (something new for me) and your support will help to sustain me during this time. More specifically, your financial support will cover my living expenses so I can step out of survival mode and fully commit to this year of rest, reflection, and becoming.

We crowdfund businesses.

We crowdfund bail funds.

We crowdfund dreams.

We crowdfund for hospital bills.

We crowdfund for funerals.

I am asking you to help crowdfund something far less tragic and far more radical: a Black woman’s rest while she is still alive to experience it.

Fund my rest while I am living, not as a response to my collapse.