“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
— Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light
You already know the world needs changing. You feel it — in your body, in your grief, in the specific exhaustion that comes from caring deeply about things that a lot of people around you seem to ignore.
- You may have been fighting all your life to make space for yourself, or over the last few years to make space for others. Or you may be newly aware of it all, still raw from what you’ve been learning and the fact that you hadn’t seen what was happening to some of the folks around you – until you did.
- You may be organizing global communication networks from your bed with limited energy. You may be on the frontlines facing off with police and taking up space every week. You may be the one holding space for others every day — the therapist, the childcare provider, the person cooking food at a panel event.
Wherever you are in this work: you are a part of it. And you deserve rest.
Not as a reward; when the news cycle slows down; after the next action, the next petition, the next crisis. Now. As you are. Because rest is not a retreat from the movement — it is what makes the movement possible over time.
Everyone in the Movement Counts — Including You
When we picture an activist, a particular image tends to come to mind: someone at a microphone, on a picket line, in a meeting room with a whiteboard full of strategy. That image is incomplete.
The movement is held together by a vast, often invisible web of people:
- Those who have been in it since birth — raised in activist households, carrying the knowledge and the weight of generations of struggle. You did not choose this work so much as it chose you, and the burnout you may carry may be older than you realize.
- Those who are newly awake — perhaps radicalized by a news event, a loss, a conversation that cracked something open. You are still finding your footing, and we are glad you are here, many of us were where you are now as we learned of issues that did not directly impact us.
- Those organizing from home on limited spoons — disabled activists, chronically ill organizers, neurodivergent community members who contribute research, writing, social media strategy, emotional support, and sharp analysis from beds and couches and quiet rooms.
- Those supporting the frontlines — the therapists holding space for organizers in crisis. The neighbours, friends, aunts, uncles, auncles, older siblings, parents and grandparents providing childcare so others can show up. The cooks, the drivers, the people who process the donations and send the emails at 11pm. The movement cannot run without you.
- Those who are not yet sure of their role — and who feel the pull of wanting to do something while also feeling frozen by not knowing where to start, by fear of getting it wrong, by the crush of the news cycle, by their own marginalized identity making the stakes feel unbearably high. You belong here too.
This is not work that any one person carries alone. It never has been. The movements that have moved mountains have always been collective — which means your particular capacity, your particular contribution, your particular form of showing up matters, and your rest matters too.
What Activist Burnout Actually Looks and Feels Like
Rest in movement spaces can be misread — by others and by ourselves. We are socialized by capitalists systems that view rest as laziness, apathy, or betrayal. It gets internalized as weakness or privilege. It rarely gets named as what it actually is: a physiological and psychological response to sustained, high-stakes, under-resourced labour done in the context of ongoing systemic harm.
You might be experiencing activist burnout if you notice:
- A numbness or disconnection from things that once felt urgent and alive
- Dread when you open the news, social media, or your group chat
- Resentment — toward the movement, toward other activists, toward yourself
- A sense that nothing you do is enough, or that the work is pointless
- Physical exhaustion that sleep does not fix
- Withdrawing from community while simultaneously feeling guilty about it
- Difficulty feeling joy, or when you do feel joy and you feeling guilty about it
Your body is trying to tell you something. Not to stop working, but to make that work sustainable.
Rest as Resistance — Not Just a Slogan
Audre Lorde wrote those words about self-care as an act of political warfare in the context of her own terminal cancer diagnosis — a Black, lesbian woman in a world where she had to claim her rest. She was not talking about bubble baths. She was talking about refusing the logic of a system that profits from your depletion.
The same system that created the conditions you are fighting against also created the conditions that make rest feel dangerous, selfish, or impossible. Capitalism tells us our worth is our productivity. White supremacy tells BIPOC communities to be twice as good and work twice as hard. Ableism tells disabled people their worth is contingent on output. Patriarchy trains women and femmes to pour into everyone else first.
When you rest — when you genuinely, unapologetically rest — you are refusing all of that. You are insisting that your life has value beyond what you produce. That is not a small thing. That is, as Lorde called it, “an act of political warfare”.
The movement needs you over years, not just weeks. A fire that burns at full intensity without fuel does not burn longer — it burns out. Rest is the fuel.
If You’re Scared to Tap In — That’s Worth Paying Attention To
Many people who feel drawn to movement work also feel held back from it — and the reasons are worth naming with compassion rather than judgment.
Perfectionism says: I can’t show up until I know enough, have read enough, am certain I won’t cause harm. It keeps you on the sidelines indefinitely, consuming information without ever feeling ready to act. Perfectionism is often rooted in anxiety — and in the very real stakes that come with being a person from a marginalized community who knows that mistakes can cost more when you are already under scrutiny.
Anxiety about the news cycle can make engaging feel genuinely dangerous to your nervous system. When every headline is a new wound, sometimes the most honest thing you can say is: I cannot hold any more right now. That is not apathy. That is a body that has reached its limit.
Not knowing where to start is real — and more common than anyone admits. The movement is large, decentralized, and sometimes contradictory. There is no single door in. Looking to role models helps: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Harsha Walia, Jane Shi, Robin Maynard, Kin Balaam and many others including the elders in your own community who have been doing less visible work for decades. You do not have to reinvent a path — you can follow the ones that have already been made and then extend them in your own direction.
And if you have tried to engage and found yourself overwhelmed, shutting down, or unable to sustain it — it may mean that before you pour out, you need to receive some support yourself.
This is where therapy — specifically, anti-oppressive therapy with a BIPOC therapist who understands the particular weight of this work — can make a meaningful difference.
How Anti-Oppressive Therapy Can Support Activists
Not all therapy is built for people doing this kind of work. A therapist who does not understand systemic oppression may inadvertently ask you to “reframe” your anger about injustice, or to “practice acceptance” about things that are not yours to accept. That is not healing — it is an individualist and passive approach to harm.
An anti-oppressive therapist holds both: the personal and the political. They understand that your exhaustion is not just individual — it is structural. And that recovering from it requires more than willpower; it requires rest, and a community that is fighting alongside you. They can help you:
- Identify the difference between productive engagement and compulsive hypervigilance
- Process grief, rage, and secondary trauma without bypassing or numbing
- Reconnect with your own values and capacity — not someone else’s standard of enough
- Navigate perfectionism and anxiety that are keeping you frozen
- Build a sustainable relationship with the work — one that can last
- Find your role, your pace, and your particular way of contributing
- Connect with others doing the same, this work is not meant to be done alone
You are allowed to get support for the weight you are carrying. In fact, getting that support may be one of the most important things you do for yourself, and for the people around you.
You Don’t Have to Get It Perfect — You Just Have to Stay In
The movements that have changed the world were not made by perfect people. They were made by people who showed up imperfectly, rested when they had to, made mistakes, repaired what they needed to, and kept going. They were made by people who yelled through the microphones on crowded streets, charged the speakers systems, built the trolley to pull the speakers, offered their cars for transport, lent their homes as meeting spaces, made the tea, knew when to crack a joke, and held the grief – the essential work that rarely makes the news.
You are allowed to not know your role yet; are allowed to be still finding it; are allowed to contribute in a way that looks nothing like what you imagined activism looked like.
“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Loving myself is an act of survival.”
— Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light
And you are allowed — always — to rest. Not because you’ve earned it. Not because things have calmed down. But because you are a living person, and living people need rest, and your presence matters. Find a therapist who understands rest as resistance
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About Healing in Colour
Healing in Colour is a directory of BIPOC therapists and allied professionals across Canada who are committed to anti-oppressive values. We envision a world where BIPOC, in all our intersections, have access to therapy that supports our healing and liberation.
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