Fatigue Is My Friend

What four days of unemployment have taught me about rest, worth, and healing from the global grind

“You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.”

—Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance

Today is the fourth day I’ve been unemployed.

Day six if you count weekends. (And I do—because for years, weekends have been catch-up days, not rest days.)

At the beginning of May, we drove to Wisconsin for a month of Bigfoot activities: night hikes, festivals, a veterans’ campout. We imagined it would be a month of joy and presence.

And it was… sort of.

What no one saw behind the scenes was the sudden loss of my biggest contract—a blow that cut our monthly income in half. So while we smiled for photos and showed up publicly with our best Squatchy selves, we were privately having hard, heated talks:

How will we keep the lights on? Pay the truck note? What the hell do we do now?

I sprang into action—job boards, applications, tutoring platforms. I reminded myself: we’ve got our YouTube channel, this Substack, our websites, our handmade wellness goods. A little retirement. A new VA payment starting to trickle in.

But even with all of that, the math didn’t work.

We needed a plan. And I was determined to find one before the end of the month.

Now, we’re slowly making our way back to Texas. We drive 3–5 hours a day, then rest. I could be using those hours to hustle—to write, build my course, land freelance gigs.

But instead?

I’ve been sleeping.

Nine, ten hours a night. Napping in the truck. Staring out the window at trees without a single thought in my head.

And now that I’ve stopped pushing, I realize how long I’ve needed to.

It didn’t come out of nowhere. The signs were stacking up for months: the ache in my legs every time I walked the dog. The bone-deep pull toward naps in the middle of the day. Brain fog thickening, even with stellar nutrition. The way climbing into our camper bed started feeling like a full-body obstacle course—more Olympic sport than nighttime ritual. Or even today, as we toured the Museum of American Speed…I was certainly not speeding through that massive race car shrine…

…it was more like slogging my way through. All an indication that I AM EXHAUSTED.

But worse than the actual slogging has been the sense that I am a failure because I can’t “push through” anymore.

But I’m not failing.

I am finally slowing down enough to hear my body whisper what it had been screaming in silence:

Please stop.

And for the first time in my adult life, I’m not shaming myself for it.

In a museum full of race cars…this was my favorite display. Because SNOOPY.

Healing doesn’t always look like doing

Years ago, when I was in therapy for an eating disorder, my nutritional therapist told me this:

“Fatigue is normal. As your body heals, it will need more sleep than the usual eight hours. Take the nap. Go to bed early. No shame.”

Back then, I needed to hear it in the context of food and recovery.
Now, I’m hearing it again in the context of everything.

Because I’m not just healing from physical ailments—Hashimoto’s, liver congestion, arthritis, hormonal chaos.

I’m healing from the collapse that comes after decades of chasing worth through productivity.

Not from capitalism itself, but from the hollowed-out version of it—the one that measures value by output, treats rest as weakness, and ties human worth to nonstop performance.

I’m healing from the twisted empire that took the bones of free enterprise and fused them with globalist machinery—turning initiative into obligation, and creativity into currency for someone else’s kingdom.

From a system that taught me rest had to be earned. That it was a luxury reserved for the deserving few.

Some call this capitalism—but it’s not.

What we live under now is a parasitic parody of the free-enterprise brilliance our founders envisioned.

We’ve traded an opportunity to thrive for an economy of depletion.
A grind built on soul-extraction.

And I’m done feeding the grind gods.

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So why is rest so important?

Because your body is not a machine.
It’s a symphony of cellular intelligence. And it heals in rest.

💤 Deep sleep is when your brain detoxes. The glymphatic system (your brain’s trashmen) clears waste that builds up during the day—waste that, left unprocessed, contributes to brain fog, anxiety, even neurodegenerative disease.

🦴 It’s when tissue repair happens. Collagen synthesis, bone remodeling, injury healing—this isn’t happening when you’re “pushing through.” It happens when you sleep.

🌙 Sleep restores your circadian rhythm. And your circadian rhythm isn’t just about sleep—it regulates hormones, metabolism, digestion, even emotional regulation.

🧠 REM cycles are emotional processing cycles. Your nervous system files, integrates, and discharges emotional overwhelm while you dream.

And perhaps most radically:

Rest is how your body knows it’s safe.

And when your body feels safe, it finally stops clinging to fat, cortisol, inflammation, fear.

It begins to trust again.

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Rest is not a reward. It’s a right.

We’ve been trained to see fatigue as failure.

But what if it’s just feedback?

What if your exhaustion isn’t proof that you’re broken—but that your body has finally exhaled long enough to feel what it needs?

And what if the deeper truth is this:

Fatigue is your friend.
Not your enemy.
Not your shame.

I’m learning that now.

I cannot return to a life of collapse. Not now. Not ever again.

I want slow mornings, deep relationships, meaningful work offered in sacred exchange—not survival trades.

And that begins by befriending the voice in me that says: Rest. Sleep. Lie down, love.

So today, I honor my fatigue.
Not as a setback.
But as a sacred signpost. A sacred altar to trust.
Trust that as I live as humans were intended to live—unhurried, attuned, sovereign—
my needs will not only be provided… but provided in abundance.

(And as I write this, we have just received notice that my husband’s VA compensation has been increased…just slightly, but increased nonetheless. Let the abundance flow.)

Let it be said: healing isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes, it’s about finally stopping.

💤 Let your body sleep.
💤 Let your worth be unquestioned.
💤 Let your next season begin with softness.

Fatigue is not failure.
Fatigue is your friend.

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✨ Before you go…

Where has your body been asking for rest lately?
What would it look like to honor your fatigue—not as failure, but as a sacred signpost, a concerned and devoted friend?

I’d love to hear how this lands for you.
Feel free to share in the comments—your stories, your naps, your quiet revolutions. 💛