10/22/2026
Where did you learn that slowing down had to be earned?
On Sunday, I gathered with members of the Empowered Spaces collective. All year, people had named what they needed: room to breathe and be together.
So we borrowed an idea from permaculture. Sometimes, a field is left fallow for a season, allowing the soil to rest and renew.
We wanted to make room for that kind of rest together.
Each of us chose a leaf from our garden to hold something we’d been carrying, then placed it in a bowl of earth.
Some of what we set down came from work we love. Some came from systems that ask more of us than any body can give.
What stayed with me most was how it felt to slow down enough to be present, with ourselves and with each other. To have time together without needing to accomplish anything.
Rest can feel like something we have to justify, earn, or postpone until everything else is taken care of.
And who gets to pause, who is expected to keep going, and who gets cared for are shaped by the systems we live within.
At Empowered Spaces, we want to keep cultivating places where more of us can exhale.
Where we can practice caring for ourselves and one another, and where we don’t have to carry everything alone.
Where we can remember that rest is part of the cycle. Growth needs periods of quiet, too.
Questions I’m continuing to hold,
What do we make possible for each other when we slow down together?
What becomes possible when we make room for rest together?
What would it mean to treat care as something we practice with one another, rather than something each of us has to manage alone?
Which question stays with you?
with love and rest,
Kelly
