Recovery is Strategy
All living systems need time to recover. Every exhale requires an inhale, and vice versa. After a big push, there’s always a downshift, and it isn’t a luxury or a reward. It’s part of the cycle itself. And so, we pause to align purpose with practice.
In a culture that prizes urgency, it’s easy to overemphasize the surge of energy that comes with doing and underemphasize what comes after completion. But sustainability isn’t found only in the high points of collective action; it’s built in the in-between, the troughs: the recovery rooms, the post-meeting debriefs, the kitchens and living rooms where people land, decompress, and make sense of what just happened. There is much in the moments of celebration and reflection to remind us of what we are building together.
Without those intentional pauses, our systems get confused, our folks get tired.As many of our teachers tell us, if we don't take those pauses intentionally, those pauses will take us by surprise. In the forms of sickness, burnout, exhaustion or confusion.
As many of our teachers tell us, if we don't take those pauses intentionally, those pauses will take us by surprise. In the forms of sickness, burnout, exhaustion or confusion. We can take the pause intentionally or it can take us by surprise, but the pause will be taken either way.
The Wisdom of a Down Shift
Modern trauma research has shown us what happens when people return from high-intensity experiences without enough time or space to process and prepare for the next set of actions. The body stays stuck in survival mode, unable to distinguish between safety and threat, discomfort and dysregulation. Many of the foundational insights in trauma theory came from studying soldiers coming home from war. When they were sent directly from the battlefield to their living rooms, without decompression time, their nervous systems stayed on high alert, and this resulted in preventable calamities at home.
Movements and organizations face a similar challenge, as they too are bodies that require rest. We rally and respond to injustice or the need to change with rightful intensity, but too often, we go straight from the front lines or an all-day team intensive back into our next policy push or crisis call.. There’s no collective exhale. No ritual of rest before the return. No time to let the (collective) body come back to baseline.
Without recovery, our capacity for discernment and response with care erodes. We start to confuse activity with progress, reactivity with responsiveness, and exhaustion with intentionality.
How We Recover is How We Work
We are always building the future, and if we never dance, never sleep, never go to karaoke night, never have time with our loved ones - are we truly shaping the future we’re dreaming/imagining/desiring? Yet, it is how many of us do our work, with no chill, like a car with no brakes. Recovery isn’t about retreating from the work indefinitely, it’s about building in short windows of time and processes needed between big pushes. It is about making sure the work is sustainable instead of insufferable.
We can recover from overexertion. From perfectionism. From scarcity and over-identification with urgency. Rest, reflection, and repair aren’t moral failings. We are all building healing within systems that have taught us to equate worth with output and to define output as endless action. Exhaustion and “hard work” is what we have learned from responding to what seems like a never-ending onslaught. Building recovery practices—individually and collectively—is how we resist/rewrite the script.
Recovery, like organizing, is a discipline. It’s a set of repeated, intentional actions that keep the system whole and balanced. Since humans are herd animals, we know that collective commitment to recovery is more impactful than trying to go it alone. Many of our clients have a ‘high season’ of work: grantmaking, youth work, campaigning - and are learning how to follow these times with a season of rest. And rather than coordinating individual schedules or having one or two people take time off and come back to an exhausted team, the whole organization takes a break. Rather than relying on individuals to make the decision of when to take off and how much time and balancing commitments, these organizations say: we all need rest, and we are all going to get some. And we are all going to come back together better for it. We always note that our nervous systems need a minimum of 72 hours to reset, so it is not unusual to have 4-7 days off to come back replenished.
We regulate in relationship - to ourself and others we trust (see Nadine Burke Harris speak to this here) Our nervous systems calibrate to one another, just like birds flock or fish schools swim in unison. True recovery doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens in connection. When we create spaces for shared reflection, collective rest, and relational repair, we restore the feedback loops that keep our systems healthy. The point isn’t to be calm all the time. The point is to move together through a spectrum of feelings and thoughts in ways that let everyone find their rhythm and calm again. When we say rest, it can be in many forms:
Sleeping
Reading
Break from electronics
Walking outdoors
Sitting with the purpose of presence
Breathing while paying attention to our breath
Feeling the sensations within our body and naming the sensation
Playing “analogy” games like puzzles, board games, cards, etc.
Singing
Dancing
Dysregulation is information: it tells us what needs attention. recovery allows us to pause, to metabolize the information , and to choose the next right action.
The key is the ability to notice and understand dysregulation, and then to listen long enough to pinpoint where it's coming from, and then discern how to treat it from there. To that end, we must rest enough to survive and sustain the work, even in the face of fascism.. Healing isn’t about being calm all the time; it’s about being connected enough to know when to rest and when to rise.
Recovery as Strategy
When we embed recovery into our movements, organizations, and personal rhythms, we make sustainability possible. We stop confusing exhaustion for commitment. We remember that taking care of ourselves and each other is not a side practice; it’s how we stay alive long enough to see the world we’re building take root.
To build a world beyond burnout, we must see recovery as strategy; rest and regulation aren’t separate from the work—they are also the work. And the work is always in the works.
This piece is part of our “Organizing Equity: Values in Action” series, where we reflect on how values, embodiment, and sustainability guide our collective work. Read the first installment, “From Mobilization to Organization” on the in-flections blog.