Choosing Ease

I turned 30 in October, and as I entered this new decade, I audaciously claimed one word: ease.
This word is a far cry from my early twenties.

As I declare a new chapter, a new way of living, I can see just how much I’ve slowed down over the past few years.

In my early twenties, there was a time when I worked as a preschool assistant teacher, a barista, and a babysitter all at once. I was working to survive. I spent years in survival mode.

One of my best friends would often tell me I was the hardest working person they knew. I once took pride in that. Who does not want to be told they are a hard worker?

My mother is the hardest working woman I know. A single immigrant mother who left her home in South Sudan, she raised me and my siblings with strength and determination. She worked two, sometimes three jobs throughout my life and built an incredible life for us and for herself. An immigrant success story. I know I got it from my mama.

My mother embodies perseverance and hard work.

My early twenties were far from ease. They were defined by hard work. They were infused with worry, anxiety, sleepless nights, weight loss and weight gain, financial fear, and constant uncertainty.

My nervous system had no regulation. I never slowed down.

By my mid twenties, I grew tired.

As I enter my thirties, I declare a new story, one filled with ease and intentional slowing down. A life with less noise and fewer distractions. A life where worry, anxiety, and fear no longer have a home.

These days, my life is shaped by rituals and practices.

I savor my morning pages. I connect to my breath, deep, slow belly breaths. I learned how to breathe properly for the first time through my journey of slowing down.

Prayer has always carried me, but I no longer rely on church walls to connect with God. My spirituality lives within me now, woven into my everyday life.

My nervous system feels safe. It feels calm.

When I think about the generations before me, especially stories like my mother’s and my aunties’, like so many immigrant mothers, rest and ease are not synonymous. The immigrant story is one of hard work, grind, perseverance, and endless labor. Work, work, work.

That is what I knew. That is what I lived out until I reached the middle of my twenties and began to reclaim a new story.

One of gentleness.
Softness.
Ease.
Pleasure.
And dare I say rest.

I am breaking the cycle of hard work equaling success. Yes, hard work matters. But hard work can coexist with rest. It can be aligned with ease. It can mean pouring into yourself before pouring into others.

I want to speak directly to Black women here, because I am a Black woman, an African woman. May we reclaim and rewrite our stories.

I no longer want to be known as the hardest working person you know. I want to be known as a woman who moves with ease. A woman who is rested. A woman who pours from a full cup because she has made the time to pour into herself first.

As I reflect on my journey so far, I look back at the girl who had been running for so long. She grew tired.

Slowing down is not easy at first. Everything you have been running from comes rushing in the moment it gets quiet. It can feel like the waves will crush you, like you might drown.

But if you stay still long enough, the waves will wash over you. And there you will be, washed and renewed. Everything you once ran from will be carried away to shore. The sun will dry you.

You deserve ease.
You deserve rest.