Nice Work: I’m just supposed to pretend like everything’s OK?

Hey there,

Honestly, we didn’t know it was possible to pack this much chaos into the shortest month of the year. Every day, we wake up and wonder: What horrifying headlines will we read today? What new dehumanizing policy is about to hit our community? Who’s about to get laid off, or labeled an “underperformer,” or have their entire department dismantled overnight?

And, more selfishly: How do we do sales right now? Is there ever a good time to send a marketing email? Will our tiny business be OK?

And yet, we also know we’re lucky. We don’t have execs demanding fake smiles. No one’s telling us to stop caring about equity and inclusion. We can admit to each other that some days it’s just impossible to focus. That we didn’t get much sleep. That we’re angry, sad, and scared.

A lot of our clients can’t say the same. We hear it in our coaching calls and group sessions: I’m not sure what’s safe to say out loud at work anymore. And then there’s the cognitive dissonance: I’m just supposed to pretend like everything’s OK?

It’s exhausting—the hypervigilance, the masking, the endless performing. And that’s on top of the energy folks already put into their work—the advocating and influencing and stakeholder management and slide decks.

So what’s the most rational thing to do right now? Rest.

If that makes you wince: we get it. When the topic first came up in a group coaching session earlier this month, the community members in attendance reacted the same way. Hell, we even hesitated to suggest it. After all, who has time to rest when there’s so much to push back on, to speak up against, to get through? And who even deserves rest—especially when there are so many others out there under more immediate threat?

Our answer: everyone.

Something remarkable happened in that group coaching session. Once people admitted to themselves that they’d hit their limits, they felt relief. They stopped choking down tears and let them well up instead. Feelings that had been shoved way down deep—all the pain and anger and fear—bubbled to the surface, and then released. They stopped spending all that energy keeping their masks from slipping off.

They were at rest.

Just an hour of not pretending everything’s fine created space—created a pause in which they could breathe, and observe, and reflect. They could ask themselves what they really needed right now—and then figure out how to get it, whether that was asking their partner for more support or choosing something meaningful to focus on in the chaos at work. By the end, they told us: I needed this more than I realized.

Maybe you do, too.

If so, we invite you to ask yourself some of the same questions we’ve been talking about in our community: What’s your relationship with rest right now? How do you know when you need it? When is it hard to give yourself permission to have it?

And just as importantly: where can you rest? Who are the people you can lower your guard and take off your mask around? And we don’t just mean at home, with your family or partner (though you deserve to rest there, too). But also at work and in your professional communities: Who can you be real with? Who will meet you in the muck of this moment—and actually acknowledge the shit you’re both sitting in?

Find those people. Create those spaces. Because the rest we all need—the rest that will help us survive, that will fuel us to fight for the world we want to see—doesn’t come solely from time off or extra sleep (though you could probably use both of those, too). It comes when we are connected to one other, and to ourselves. It comes when we have space to be real.

– Sara & Jen