Flourish Anyway: How Rest Remembers Your Inherent Enoughness
A trauma therapist's journey through non-linear healing — and how you can begin yours
You Don't Have to Collapse to Deserve Care
“I don't know anything else but this."
"I don't even know what rest would look like."
These words heard from high-functioning, brilliant, and deeply spiritual women. Shoulders tight. Smiles practiced. Exhaustion hidden beneath strength. They’re praised for holding it all together, yet no one asks: Who’s holding you?
As a therapist and firstborn daughter, I know this place: the mind knowing rest is deserved, the body remembering how inactivity was criticized. For Black women raised to hold it down, this disconnect isn't just learned. It's inherited.
The Lie of Earned Rest
Maybe you’ve heard it too.
That rest must be earned. That you have to push through the pain, carry everyone else, and only pause once everything is handled. It is the ultimate myth. What if rest is not a luxury or a reward, but part of your design? Your breath requires no permission. Why should your rest?
Even Genesis reminds us: rest wasn’t earned — it was innate. God’s rest was a deliberate pause, not due to weariness. It was about completion. A reminder that rest isn’t what we earn at the end. It’s woven into who we are. So why does rest feel like a betrayal? Because we’ve tied survival to worth. Yet many of us feel rest is unsafe. "If I stop, who will hold everything together?" These thoughts come from survival, not laziness — but surviving is not the same as being alive.
Researcher Cheryl Woods Giscombé's "Superwoman Schema" (2010) names this: an identity demanding we be everything for everyone. But rest isn't selfish. It's the doorway back to who you are.
The Body Knows the Truth
For many high-functioning women, exhaustion does not begin with language. It begins with sensation: tight chest, lump in the throat, stomach pain. These are not random discomforts. They are SOS messages from a nervous system that’s carried too much for too long.
The body and brain are always in conversation, even when we feel fragmented or disconnected. When you feel tension, ask: “Is this mine to carry? Am I in danger now?”
If the answer is no, soften your shoulders. Let your body know: “I am safe. I can let this go for now.”
Brainspotting and My Path Back
In my earlier years as a therapist, I leaned into traditional models and later trained in EMDR. But it was Brainspotting that shifted everything.
During a Brainspotting training, I volunteered as the demo client. I began with a specific trigger, but the pointer led to an unprocessed, preverbal experience:
Throat sealing shut
Harsh NICU lights behind my eyelids (preterm, separated from my mother)
Skin aching for touch
The trainer asked, “Could this be from before words?” It was. My nervous system absorbed: I am alone. I am not safe. That imprint shaped my responses to stress, closeness, and uncertainty before I had words. This is the work of honoring what lives beneath language.
Brainspotting allows the body to access what talk therapy cannot. It does not ask you to explain. It meets you where the tension lives in the body and helps you release what’s been carried for too long. In that presence, healing begins. No explanations needed. Just a body learning it’s finally safe to stop.
Rest Is Not a Weakness
We were taught slowing down was dangerous. In a system that ties worth to how well we serve others, rest became a threat. We learned to stay busy, alert, and useful to survive. This is generational. Spiritual.
Let these truths settle:
I am valuable because I exist.
I can release what was never mine.
Flourish Anyway: Where to Start
This is how the cycle breaks: when we stop mistaking exhaustion for excellence and discover that rest is the soil where flourishing grows.
Flourishing is not about hustling, forcing growth, or sacrificing your well-being to prove you are okay. True flourishing begins when you pause — when you step back from the noise and listen to what your body already knows. Sometimes it means being courageous enough to be still when everything in you wants to keep going. This is not surrender. This is the courage to trust your enoughness needs no proof. That is healing.
Each time you release what was never yours to carry, you honor those who came before you — the ones who weren't allowed to stop. Your healing becomes their healing too. Healing isn't linear. Our intentional rest nurtures the roots of future generations.
Try this now, as you read. Not later, when you’ve “earned” it.
I invite you to:
1. Close your eyes for one full breath
2. Place your hand on your heart
3. Whisper:
“I see how much you have held.
You need not carry it all.
You can rest now.
You were born worthy,
and nothing can change that.”
This is how we rewrite the story, not by earning peace, but by claiming it.
This is how broken systems lose their power.
This is what it means to flourish…
Demetria Jackson, M.A., LMFT, Licensed Therapist | Alto Sax Enthusiast | Traveler
By day, I help people heal at Free to Flourish Counseling and Consulting, LLC. By night, you’ll find me spinning neo-soul on my vintage record player or buried in a book. Mom of two, wife of one. Let’s connect: @free2flourishcounseling | www.freetoflourishcounseling.com