I have long believed that to be healthy we need to balance the yin and yang in our lives, and if we do not get enough yin – rest, recovery, rejuvenation – then our bodies force us to, in the form of illness or injury. And indeed, any time I look back on my life and remember times when I was completely taken out by a virus or, in one spectacularly debilitating case in 2019, injury, I absolutely know that the time preceding that was one of stress and exhaustion.

Sometimes that can’t be helped, of course. I had two babies in less than eighteen months and the second one was colicky, and the ensuing sleeplessness and generalized exhaustion was beyond my control. However, there are many times in my life when I had sleeplessness and generalized exhaustion and it WAS in my control; I am a high-energy person and I have a tendency to Do More, Push Through, Just Keep Swimming, etcetera. If I don’t balance that level of activity and energy expenditure with adequate rest, disaster ensues. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn many times.

And so these days I am very tender with myself, I take care of myself like I would a small child. I make sure I am nourishing myself on every level: I ensure that I’m getting the proper sleep, that I’m resting emotionally and mentally, that I have adequate nutrition and hydration, and that I am spending time with people who fill up my soul.

Recently a number of friends mentioned that they feel a deep sense of guilt when relaxing, that they feel taking time to read or do other quiet solo activities feels “lazy,” and, although this wasn’t said outright, intimated that they really need to be productive to feel valued. I have been thinking about that a lot lately, particularly since reading The Relaxed Woman, which is affirming, transformative, and inspirational, and everyone should read it. I am going to become a Relaxed Woman evangelist, is what I’m saying.

But something really resonated with me, both with these conversations with my friends and also by reading The Relaxed Woman, and that is this feeling that in order to rest, we need to earn it, we do not deserve rest on its own.

I read Bridget Jones’s Diary when it came out in paperback, circa 1997, and at the time I found it hilariously funny and deeply relatable. There is a part where Bridget is talking with her friend Tom about her daily intake of calories.

“A thousand?” said Tom, incredulously. “But I thought you needed two thousand just to survive.”

I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spend so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.

So funny, back in 1997! So relatable! Look at us disgusting people, greedily eating food! I want to travel back in time and hug myself. This is especially relevant at this time of year, when eating regimes and body ideals abound: we don’t need to earn food. We deserve to eat just by existing on this planet, and similarly, we deserve to rest. We have value in who we are, not what we can do, not in how productive we are or how how much we can squeeze into a day, particularly for the benefit of other people.

Instead of asking, “Have I worked hard enough to deserve to rest?,” I’ve started asking, “Have I rested enough to do my most loving and meaningful work?” – The Relaxed Woman

I love January; I love the fresh-start energy of the month. I love having a fresh new planner and notebook, and plans on how to fill them. Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten. But there is a balance between productivity and rest, and resting is not lazy. Giving our bodies, minds, and souls respite is not lazy. Taking time for ourselves in whatever ways we need is not selfish. We wouldn’t drive a car for every moment of the day and then be angry when it ran out of gas. We would just fill it with gas.

I think we have all internalized this ideal of Superwoman, that we can do everything at all times: we can parent perfectly and work hard and keep a spotless house and be thin and fit and gorgeous and whip up three perfect meals a day and it all looks Instagram-worthy at every moment. This Superwoman ideal, says the author of The Relaxed Woman, harms women by perpetuating the myth that women really don’t need to rest or to take time for themselves; they can do everything for everyone and put themselves last, always, and happily. It is anti-feminist, and so damaging to celebrate this idea that we can just work ourselves into the ground and be lauded for it, like modern day martyrs.

We have normalized the idea that a woman’s work is never done and I feel that in 2026, we should stop that. This is the month where we are all enthusiastically setting goals, and I do think that’s great. We can aim to improve areas of our lives while still taking time for ourselves without guilt, without shame, without feeling lazy or unworthy. Our work can be done. We can rest, in whatever way “resting” means.

My goals are, as every year, evergreen and unchanging, along with being extremely nebulous and difficult to quantify: ideas like being present and practicing patience, living life with arms wide open and go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. Daily I subscribe to my REM Y REM practice, which stands for Reading, Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep; without those restful things I cannot be my best self and I cannot show up in the way that I want to.

In this month of goals and intentions and fresh starts, my wish is that we all know we are deserving of rest without having to “earn” it first, that we can aim for the stars AND take tender care of ourselves, that feelings of guilt and shame over resting and relaxing can dissipate, and that we become the person that our younger selves needed.

Weekly Reading

Radical Acceptance. Speaking of meditation! What a perfect choice for the first book of 2026! To be honest, I have been very slowly reading this book for the past several months, and just happened to finish it today. The lessons in Radical Acceptance are beautiful and loving; basically, for all you yogis and meditators out there, it’s about practicing loving kindness towards ourselves and others, and gives very practical advice on how to do that, using many very relatable examples. The author is not preachy, but instead – as you might expect – loving and kind in her writing. One great takeaway is the RAIN approach toward negative emotions: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and Nourish. This really spoke to me and has helped me through some emotionally turbulent times. 

Moral Disorder. Of course I had to reread Moral Disorder after reading Margaret Atwood’s memoir! This is the most auto-fiction of all her collections, and it is one of my favourites. I love this glimpse of her life through interconnected stories, both from third and first person points of view.

After two solid weeks of intense and intentional rest – extra sleep, extra reading, lots of puzzles – I feel refreshed and ready to get back into my regular routine. Hello January! I hope you all are similarly rejuvenated and have taken – and are taking – adequate rest. xo