You're Not Lazy. You Just Don't Know How to Rest Yet.
Owning Pleasure As A Black Woman, Season 7 Episode 3 - Rest Series Part 1
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You rested all weekend.
You slept in. You canceled the plans. You spent two days on the couch doom-scrolling, binging a series, doing absolutely nothing that looked like work.
And by Sunday night, you still felt empty. So you called yourself lazy — when really, your body was just searching for something you wouldn't let yourself have.
That's where this episode starts. And it's the beginning of a brand-new series inside Season 7's theme of desire: the seven types of rest.
Rest Was Never the Problem — Desire Was Missing From It
Most of us think rest means one of two things: sleeping all day, or doing absolutely nothing. But if you've ever slept a full eight, nine, twelve hours and woken up feeling just as empty as when you laid down, you already know that sleeping and doing nothing isn't the whole story.
Rest isn't one thing. And it isn't linear. It was never designed to just be the absence of work — the negative space where nothing is happening. It was supposed to be a return to something you actually want.
Here's the pattern I see over and over: Black women have been conditioned to only accept earned rest. You have to do something first in order to deserve to rest your mind, your body, your spirit. And because it has to be earned, it's never been allowed to be about desire — about something you actually crave. It's only ever been allowed to be about what's minimally necessary to keep going.
That's not rest. That's maintenance.
The Seven Types of Rest (And Why One Isn't Enough)
There's a framework — seven distinct types of rest — that comes from Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's book Sacred Rest.
Each of those seven types isn't just a different category of recovery. It's a different way of listening to what you actually want.
Physical rest might be your body asking for stillness. Creative rest might be a desire for beauty, for color, for something that has no purpose other than the fact that it delights you. Sensory rest might be a desire for quiet — for less input, less decision-making, a world that isn't asking anything of you for just a minute.
You can be physically rested and still be emotionally depleted, because the type of rest you took never touched the thing you actually needed.
So if rest hasn't been "working" for you, it might not be because you're doing it wrong. It might be because no one ever taught you that rest is allowed to include desire — and that there are a multitude of ways to rest.
This episode is the beginning of a seven-part series. Over the next seven episodes, we're going through each type one at a time, asking the same question each time: what does this type of rest actually want to give me?
My Own Rolodex of Rest
For a long time, I thought rest really was just: take a nap, go to sleep. But when I became a business owner, I had to look at rest differently — because I wasn't working the same way anymore. I wasn't putting in eight hours a day. Some days it was only two or three, and I'd already done everything I needed to do.
So I'd sit there thinking: okay, well, what do I do now? I'm not tired. I don't want to nap. I don't want to watch another show.
That's when I started leaning into being creative. I found hobbies. I started going outside. I leaned into social rest — being around people who actually fed into me, and learning when I needed time to myself instead. I started paying attention to spiritual rest — what I needed to hold onto hope and faith while figuring out how to run a business I'd never run before.
I went through the whole Rolodex of rest. And when you bring all of those types together, it makes you feel whole. It contributes to your wellbeing. It makes you feel like you're actually living a life you feel satisfied to live — not just surviving one.
Three Questions to Ask From Desire, Not Duty
Before we go further into the series, sit with these — and answer from a place of desire, not obligation. Not what you're supposed to want. What you actually want.
When you imagine actual rest — not the version you think you're supposed to want — what does it look like?
After you rest, do you feel reconnected to something you wanted, or just less behind on something you didn't?
Is there a kind of rest you've been avoiding — maybe because wanting it feels indulgent, unfamiliar, or like too much?
Usually, whatever we're avoiding is exactly what we need. Sit with that last one a little longer than the others.
It Was Never About Productive vs. Lazy Rest
We talk a lot about productive rest versus lazy rest — like there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. There isn't. That distinction matters a lot less than we think it does, because it's still asking rest to justify itself through output. Why am I resting? What am I getting out of this?
The real question was never what kind of rest you're taking. The real question is: does it reconnect you with what you actually want?
Rest that's only used to get you back to fully functioning — to be productive again, to show up for your business, your job, everyone else — isn't rest built around desire. It's rest built around output. It just sounds a little nicer.
The gap between those two things — rest that refuels you for more producing, and rest that reconnects you to your own wanting — is exactly what this series is here to close.
If you carry guilt about "lazy" rest, hear this: that guilt is just the productivity trap, dressed up as responsibility. You are valuable and worthy because you are — not because you're constantly providing for something or someone.
What's Coming Next
Over the next seven episodes, we're taking one type of rest at a time. At each one, I want you to keep asking the same question we've been asking all season: what do I actually want here?
Your Next Step
I want to be clear about something: naming these patterns, giving you language for desire and where it's gone missing — that's real, and it matters. But it's not the same as the deeper work of actually rebuilding your relationship with wanting, in your body, over time, with support. This podcast isn't therapy, and this isn't a therapeutic relationship.
If you're curious what that deeper work looks like, the first step is completing the intake form:
→ javerywellness.com/get-started
No pressure, no urgency — just a clear next step whenever you're ready.
If you're not quite there yet and want to start smaller, that's absolutely fine. The free 7-Day Self-Care Reset is seven days of simple, grounding practices designed to help you find the kind of rest that actually reconnects you to what you want — not just the kind that gets you back to functioning.
→ Grab it at javerywellness.com/reset
Natasha Riley is a licensed therapist and founder of Javery Integrative Wellness Services. Owning Pleasure As A Black Woman is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy or a therapeutic relationship. If you are struggling or in crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.