Allowing Ourselves to Slow Down
Dear Friends,
This week in episode #6 we are thinking about pace.
Not the polished kind of pace that shows up in planners, productivity systems, or the pressure to always be moving toward the next thing. We mean the pace of a body that is trying to listen. The pace of a conversation that needs more breath. The pace of grief, creativity, community, and repair.
So many of us have learned to keep going.
Keep making.
Keep answering.
Keep organizing.
Keep caring.
Keep showing up.
Keep proving that we are serious, capable, useful, committed.
And yes, there is beauty in devotion. There is beauty in showing up for our people, our work, our students, our elders, our children, our art, our communities, our movements.
But there is also a cost when we are never allowed to stop.
When slowness feels like failure.
When rest feels like something we have to earn.
When the body has to shout before we give it permission to be heard.
We are trying to remember that slowing down is not the same as giving up.
Sometimes slowing down is how we return to ourselves.
Sometimes it is how we notice what we have been carrying.
Sometimes it is how we make room for a different kind of knowing, one that does not arrive on command.
In feminist, creative, and decolonial practice, pace matters. The demand to produce endlessly is not neutral. The pressure to be available all the time is not neutral. The idea that our worth is tied to output is not neutral.
So choosing rest, even imperfectly, can be care.
It can be resistance.
It can be repair.
Not the glossy kind of rest that becomes another thing to perform. Not rest as an aesthetic. Not rest as a new assignment we can fail at.
We mean the small, honest practices of tending.
Taking a breath before responding.
Letting the draft be unfinished.
Canceling what your body cannot hold.
Sitting in silence before rushing to make meaning.
Asking for help without apologizing for needing it.
Letting community care include you, too.
This is not always easy. Especially for those of us shaped by urgency, migration, caregiving, institutions, scarcity, violence, or the deep inherited belief that we must do more to be safe.
Slowing down can bring things up.
The ache.
The anger.
The tenderness.
The fear that if we pause, everything will fall apart.
But maybe slowing down also lets us ask better questions.
Who benefits from my exhaustion?
What am I afraid will happen if I rest?
What rhythms did I inherit, and which ones am I ready to unlearn?
What kind of creative practice becomes possible when I am not only trying to survive?
What would femtorship look like if it made room for softness, limits, and recovery?
We do not have neat answers. We are asking from inside the questions, too.
This week, we are inviting a gentler pace. Not as a solution. Not as a brand. Not as a cure-all.
As a practice.
As a permission slip.
As a way of saying: our bodies are not machines, our care is not infinite, and our liberation work needs us alive enough to feel it.
Wherever this note finds you, we hope you can take one small moment to listen for what your body, your spirit, or your creative practice is asking for.
Maybe it is rest.
Maybe it is water.
Maybe it is a boundary.
Maybe it is time outside.
Maybe it is laughter.
Maybe it is doing less, with more presence.
A softer pace is still a pace.
And you are allowed to move in ways that help you stay.
If you have a moment today, pause and ask yourself:
What would slowing down make possible for me right now?
You can write it down, sit with it, share it with someone you trust, or simply let the question stay with you.
With care,
Leslie & Katy
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