When Rest Becomes Avoidance: How I Began Staying for Myself

There was a time when I slept as often as I could.

I told myself I was tired, and I was. I was deeply, persistently tired. But sleep had also become one of the few places where I could briefly stop feeling everything waiting for me when I opened my eyes.

It gave me somewhere to go when my life felt too difficult to hold.

I slept to avoid the feelings I did not know what to do with. I slept instead of facing the chores, choices and responsibilities accumulating around me. I slept because feeling good for a moment seemed more manageable than taking action toward the life I wanted.

I called it rest.

Sometimes, it was rest. Sometimes, my body genuinely needed sleep.

But if I am honest, there were also times when I used the language of rest to justify disappearing from my own life.

When sleep stopped feeling restorative

The clearest sign was that I never felt replenished.

No amount of sleep eased the brain fog or exhaustion. I would wake up and the same responsibilities would still be waiting. The unanswered messages, unfinished chores and neglected decisions had not disappeared. They had simply gathered more weight while I was gone.

I did the bare minimum and ignored everything else for as long as I could.

Eventually, there was too much to ignore.

I felt as though I were drowning in my own life. The overwhelm made me want to retreat, but every retreat left more waiting for me when I returned. It became a cycle of exhaustion, avoidance and anxiety, and I recognized the pattern long before I felt ready to change it.

That is something I understand differently now: awareness does not always create immediate action.

Sometimes we know a pattern is hurting us while still relying on it to survive the day.

Rest and avoidance can look remarkably similar

From the outside, both can look like lying down, cancelling plans, putting away the to-do list or spending an afternoon doing very little.

The difference, for me, was not simply what I was doing. It was the relationship I had with myself while I was doing it.

Rest made room for me to return.

Avoidance helped me leave.

Rest acknowledged my limits without asking me to abandon what mattered.

Avoidance offered immediate relief while quietly increasing the weight I would eventually have to carry.

This does not mean I judge the version of myself who chose sleep. She was trying to find a way through days that felt impossible. She needed tenderness far more than she needed another lecture about discipline.

But compassion did not require me to pretend the pattern was working.

Eventually, I became sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

There was no dramatic turning point. I simply reached a place where I wanted to feel differently inside my own days.

The promise I made to myself

Last summer, I went on a solo vacation to clear my head.

I began journaling and writing what eventually became my Letters to Myself series. Beneath the exhaustion, I found grief, sadness and anger that I had spent a long time trying not to feel.

I made myself a promise: I would keep writing. I would keep listening. I would continue processing what was there instead of disappearing whenever it became uncomfortable.

Change did not happen overnight.

I began by completing one small task. Then I kept one small promise to myself. Then another.

Those promises were not impressive. They would not have looked transformational to anyone watching. But each one became evidence that I could rely on myself again.

I started learning that staying for myself did not mean forcing myself through exhaustion. It meant becoming someone who could listen honestly enough to recognize what I needed.

Sometimes that was sleep.

Sometimes it was movement, food, fresh air or a difficult conversation.

Sometimes it was turning toward the task I had been avoiding and giving it ten minutes of my attention.

Sometimes it was allowing a feeling to exist without immediately trying to escape it.

Learning a different kind of rest

Creating The Embodied Homecoming helped keep me connected to this practice.

The first part of the journey became Radical Rest because genuine rest was what I needed most, not the passive rest of sleeping through my life or scrolling until I could no longer hear myself think, but rest that could help me feel present enough to return.

Restorative rest did not ask me to disappear.

It helped me come back into relationship with my body, my feelings and the life waiting for me.

I still take naps. I still sometimes scroll aimlessly. I still have days when avoidance feels easier than presence.

The difference is that these moments no longer take over entire days or become the only way I know how to cope.

The promise I keep now is less about completing every task and more about protecting a feeling I do not want to lose again.

I am feeling more like myself.

I am present for the small moments in my days. I can feel excitement about the coming holidays and even some hope for the future. These may sound like ordinary things, but there was a long time when I could not access them.

My three chosen words are anchored, aligned and alive.

That is how I want to inhabit my life.

Not perfectly. Not every minute. But often enough to know that I am here.

Staying does not have to be dramatic

Staying for yourself may begin with something very small.

Answering one message.

Washing one dish.

Writing one honest sentence.

Stepping outside for five minutes.

Resting because your body needs rest. And returning when the rest has done its work.

It may mean noticing the difference between what restores you and what helps you disappear, without shaming yourself for either.

You do not have to rebuild your entire life today.

Perhaps you can begin with one promise small enough to keep.

Then, tomorrow, you can stay for yourself again.

With love,
Jodi

A gentle note: If you are exploring what restorative rest could look like in your own life, Radical Rest is a quiet, self-guided place to begin. Move slowly, take what supports you and leave what does not.