The first time I remember truly experiencing rest, I was waking up to the sound of roosters in Haiti. 

My mother would take us to Haiti during the summers, and mornings felt different there. The air felt fuller. The coffee was fresh and strong. Conversations drifted around the table before the sun fully settled into the sky. There was laughter. There was movement. People still woke up early. They still had fields to tend to, businesses to open, responsibilities to carry. But there was something slower about it. Something intentional. 

I was on summer break, free from school, free from routine. For the first time, I felt rest not just as sleep but as something that was grounding. I felt at home. And that sense of home created a kind of exhale I didn’t yet have language for. 

As I grew older, I began to understand the deeper juxtaposition of that memory. 

Haiti has long been treated as a site of labor: exploited labor, forced labor, revolutionary labor. It is the birthplace of the only successful Black slave revolt against the state in history. It is land marked by resistance, by extraction, by survival against systems designed to exhaust it. Haiti has been expected to produce, to endure, to rebuild, to resist, again and again. 

And yet, with that history in mind, rest and wellness has always existed. 

In the quiet morning conversations. 
In the way elders sit under trees. 

In storytelling, where people gather around.  
In the grounding ceremonies that connect spirit to land. 
In the honoring of our ancestors. 

Rest and wellness in Haiti have never been distinct from resistance. They have been intertwined with it. 

We are often conditioned to believe our worth lies in productivity. That to survive, we must constantly prove our value through output. Burnout is normalized. In many of our communities, it shows up as irritability, as silence, as carrying everything without space to process. Seeking mental health resources is still stigmatized. Pausing can feel like a luxury we are not entitled to. 

But I have come to believe that rest is not a luxury. It is a refusal. 

It is a refusal to allow systems of oppression to dictate the rhythm of our bodies. 

Over the past several months, as we at UUSC have prepared for our Haiti Partner Wellness Retreat, I have witnessed this truth in real time. The retreat brings together leaders from Haiti’s grassroots ecosystem—MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay), MPNKP (Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayiti, Batay Ouvriye, migrant rights defenders from GARR, human rights networks like POHDH and RNDDH, and independent journalists from AyiboPost who are carrying their communities through political instability and violence. 

During our planning calls, we had agendas as well as projects and timelines to discuss.  

But often, we would pause and ask: “How are you really doing?”  

And the conversation would shift. It would become less about deliverables and more about survival, about the uncertainties, about exhaustion, and about hope. 

In those moments, we made a quiet but radical choice: we refused to conduct business as usual. We refuse to normalize moments of crisis. We refuse to treat suffering as background noise. 

That, too, is wellness. 

To disrupt desensitization. 
To humanize one another. 
To create space for people to speak honestly about what they are carrying. 

Several partners shared how meaningful those pauses and reflections were, how simply being asked, sincerely, how they were doing and holding space reminded them that they were not alone. That they were seen beyond their work and their roles.  

For me, that is what this retreat represents. Not escape nor indulgence but rather restoration rooted in justice. 

This Black History Month, I am thinking about how our struggles are globally interconnected. From Haiti to the United States, to Canada, to across the diaspora, Black communities are navigating systems that demand our labor while undermining our well-being. 

Wellness does not look the same everywhere. But everywhere, it is essential for survival. 

In Haitian spirituality and culture, grounding is not abstract. It is physical. It is tied to land. To the ancestors, and to remember that we are part of something larger than the crises and challenges of the present moment. 

So, I say:  

Rest is resistance because it interrupts exploitation. 
Rest is resistance because it affirms our humanity. 
Wellness is resistance because it says we are worthy of care, especially in the midst of struggle. 

When I think back to those mornings with roosters crowing and coffee brewing, I realize now that what I felt was not just vacation ease. It was belonging. It was a rhythm that did not rush me into proving my worth. 

Honoring Haiti means honoring that rhythm. 
Honoring ourselves means reclaiming it. 

And in doing so, we move one step closer to collective Black liberation.