Constructive Rest

Stillness as a creative strategy.

“Constructive rest.”

The phrase glided from my pen to the page during a solo mushroom trip, as if it had been waiting for me to be still long enough to catch it.

If you haven’t caught on by now, there’s a timid writer living inside me and she thrives with a little help from her friend, psilocybin.

“It seems the shadows I long to uncover are hiding in the stillness of the rest that I resist,” I wrote.

Damn. I’m poetic when I’m high.

Then flowed: “Slices of American cheese creating a wave of emotions.”

Okay…so not every download is profound. Who knew I could be so aware, and still so avoidant?

Still, there was something to that phrase. Constructive rest. The kind of rest that isn’t passive, but active in its surrender. Not laziness, not avoidance, just the radical act of letting your nervous system breathe.

As a founder, a lover, a daughter, a woman—I sometimes just need to give myself a damn break. I can’t be everything, all at once, all the time.

Last month, I took the biggest leap of my career. I launched my shoe line and put the most vulnerable part of my creative self into the world, trusting that people would see the vision and want to be part of it. It was exciting. It was all-consuming. A sprint and a daily hustle to make sure the product was seen, understood, and desired.

And then…I crashed.

I ran myself dry, let the hours blur into days, my thoughts reduced to static, and my anxiety led me to fixate on one question. What now?

As I begin the next chapter of designing our new shoe and telling its story, I am met with a quiet truth. In order to create, I need to rest. Simple, uninterrupted restoration. Unanswered texts. Early nights. Slow mornings. Less talking, more reading, listening, and absorbing. Mushrooms. Wine. Dancing. Rotting on the couch. Time to sharpen the tools that built all of this in the first place.

As a founder-forward brand, it is easy to mistake rest for regression. To believe that if I am not pushing, I am falling behind. But that mindset leads straight to burnout. The kind that hollows out your work, even when it looks impressive from the outside.

My mantra is simple. Do not push. Be a body, not a brand.

There is a strange intimacy in rest. A kind of honesty I cannot always access when I am performing. Stillness can be uncomfortable. It’s easy to resist. But it is also where I return to myself. And from that place, I can create something real again.

Now go lay down and wait for what’s next :)