Since TP’s inception, and as a part of our commitment to walk the path of our values, prioritize our people, and model forward, TP has practiced what we call My-Day-Fridays. Much like our Self-Retreat weeks, My-Day-Fridays are meeting-free days meant for our team to find nourishment, balance, and moments of reflection that deepen our ability to sustain social-impact work over the long term. Distinct from a four-day work week, My-Day-Fridays center the intention to seek wellness and balance for one’s individual self, through a scheduled and preserved time of pause before launching into weekends that can often carry as much activity and responsibility as the work-week itself.
We live in a world, especially here in the United States, that is personified by busyness, long hectic days and evenings often filled with individuals and families breathlessly trying to juggle the multitude of tasks and responsibilities between work and home, hoping to fit in a little time for recreation in between. In my 20+ years of working on human rights and social justice issues it has been impossible to ignore the presence of trauma and our constant exposure to it, either through direct lived experiences or through the consumption of information about oppression, injustice and abuse or through the direct support of those communities and individuals targeted. Trauma wears on us not just mentally but also through a deterioration of our physical bodies, our emotions and our spirit. To move constantly between the action and and reactions of busy life, consuming this trauma and not pausing to honor ourselves or our space to re-center, grieve, release or reflect often leads to burn out and exhaustion, which we believe is one of the leading causes of atrophy in our field of work outside of direct threats and death.
Throughout my time working across the social justice sector I have realized that moving interchangeably from work to family to other responsibilities often leaves me so tired at the end of a day that sleep is the only reprieve, and as the work-week ends and the weekend begins, the need to attend to the responsibilities of personal life and family, even when fun and enjoyable, can leave little if any room for reflection, release, or processing of the trauma and stress we carry. Over time without a thoughtful and dedicated space and outlet, these behaviors unravel our health, our resilience and our long-term efficacy. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this into clear focus for us all, as it blurred the lines between work and home and revealed the deep cleavages and fault lines that lead to burnout, overwork and toxicity.
For myself as a single working mother with two young children I often find that all my hours in the day are spent caring for and showing up for others. Whether during work for TP’s members and my amazing team, or for my two children, parents, friends, family or wider community, my orientation is always about giving and doing, most days and weeks taking on far more than I should but with a desire to do good and create a positive impact for all. What I realized over the years of working as a single mother before TP was launched was that in this equation of life there was no room just for me. I was often jolted between the competing realities of my kids and my work, both relentless and joyful but exhausting in their own ways and the interplay of them left me exhausted. While the weekend was an end of work, it was also the beginning to 24/7 with kids at home. My-Day-Fridays are an opportunity for me to hit “pause”, and to take care of the things that I need for my own wellness, reflection, healing and resilience. These precious hours allow me to identify what my own needs are- whether wellness, sleep, time in nature, healthy meals, meeting friends or sitting in silence. I am able to prioritize what I need to fortify my body and spirit so I can show up for my loved ones and society as the very best version of me. It is a gift I give myself and all the people whose lives I touch, and one I highly recommend to anyone for whom this endless quest of “doing” resonates and feels real.
Holistic Wellbeing is just one of five core values and operating principles that underpin the work that we do here at TP. To learn more about our other core values, please visit this page; to learn more about My-Day-Fridays feel free to reach out to Sadia Hameed at sadia@thoughtpartnerships.org.