december 2025: on resting & changing

hello, friends. this top-of-month essay is also the fourth installment in this year's five days of offerings series, and i sincerely hope that you've found some encouragement, useful insights, supportive spreads, and foods for thought over the last few days. (read the whole series and check out all of my discounted offers here!)

today i am finally opening up my annual january journaling series, which for 2026 will focus on the wheel of fortune as our card of the year. this is always one of my most popular and beloved offerings, and i'm so excited to be putting wheeling into the year together for you. you can join right until the day we begin, but this year i'm offering an early bird discount if you sign up with the code WHEELING in the next 48 hours:

now, let's talk about rest, change, and surrender.

in mid-november i hopped online with my wife jeanna and dear friend bee to record a little conversation about rest. and it proved to be one of our most challenging to date — not because of cancer or surgeries or busy schedules, but because it turns out that rest is really fucking hard to talk about.

we had a plan of a sort, as we often do: questions and ideas and resources that we wanted to share. but we also had a lot of long pauses, as we all wondered if someone else had a more eloquent thought to share on this wildly necessary, horribly vague concept. even defining rest proved complicated, and sharing stories from our lives, the ways that we try to incorporate rest into our days, was a humbling experience.

we've gotten really lovely feedback on the episode, for which i'm grateful. but i remember hopping off of the recording and wondering how it would land with folks, if listening to us fumble our way through trying to discuss something so broad and opaque would actually help people remember to care for themselves.

rest is sticky. it's essential for survival if we define it as sleep or safety, but can also be seen as a massive privilege when we think of it as recovery or self-care or relaxation. so many of us feel guilty about rest, whether our to-do list is complete or we have forty things left to accomplish. we're told that we don't have to earn rest, that rest is resistance, that rest is our human right — but when we're alone in our house, trying to push through yet another important task rather than giving ourselves permission to chill out, those concepts can feel very far away.

how we define and understand rest can go a long way in helping us to understand our relationship to rest. i often associate rest with stillness, and quiet, and that makes sense — i am a person who generally loves solitude, who craves candlelight and slow music and being able to take my time (or at the very least, not rush if i don't want to). as someone who doesn't really sleep, rest-as-recovery can feel like a loaded concept. i tend to think instead about things that let my body relax, that encourage me to move with intention, that help me recharge.

but maybe you think about rest as an opposite or counter to work. maybe you think of rest as being stationary, as opposed to moving. maybe you think of rest as play. maybe for you, rest is simply a lack of obligation.

i'm not going to keep talking about definitions, but i would encourage you to take a few minutes to define rest for yourself — and to consider what that might say about your own experience of, and relationship with, rest in your everyday life.

if i'm being brutally honest, i personally feel the most rested or able to rest when i know without a shadow of a doubt that everything is under control. if my tasks are complete, if there is nothing else that needs to be done, if there's nothing wiggling in my mind that i need to address as soon as possible, then maybe — just maybe — i can rest.

but, unfortunately for all of us, not a moment before.

my poor wife, who would much rather play and rest before doing household chores (which is a completely valid preference), has to put up with me running around cleaning and straightening and tidying and prepping every time we have friends over. and as Hosting People with a Hosting House, we have friends over a lot. even when we're hosting the chosen family friends, the does-your-dishes-without-asking friends, the i-do-not-care-about-how-clean-your-bathroom-floor-is friends, i still feel like i need to make things spotless and orderly, to have everything done as soon as possible, to be a perfect host with a perfect home and a perfect assortment of snacks.

i'd like to say that i'm getting less intense about this as i get older, but i was raised by a virgo mother and have a virgo 4th house. i'm probably always going to be like this. (pray for jeanna.)

i don't love that my own capacity for rest is often attached to ideas of being finished with work for the day, or not being able to fully relax until all of my tasks are complete. especially as a small business owner, there isn't really ever a "done" — just a constant showing up, every day, addressing the most urgent or pressing deadlines one at a time. i don't believe that rest has to be earned — yet my relationship with rest, and my ability to prioritize rest, often contracts those beliefs.

i am (slowly, painfully, a little tiny bit at a time) trying to work on this in my own life — on letting rest be just as important as my other tasks, on not kicking the energetic can down the road until i'm too tired to see straight, on not powering through when there's no gas left in the tank. with my severe lifelong insomnia, i'm very high functioning even on very little sleep. and yet, what am i trying to prove when i push past my own physical limits? what is the point in spinning my wheels and making myself even more tired, stressed, disappointed? is the work i'm doing even halfway decent when i am too tired to proofread or assess it? (spoiler: the answer is no, not usually.)

we all deserve rest. yes, even me, and yes, even if the dishes still need to be done.

but how do we rest? and what might that rest accomplish, even if we aren't sure that we deserve it? i'm going to posit that resting, especially if we feel like we aren't entitled to that rest, is a powerful way to learn surrender.

if that word really bums you out, come sit by me. surrender does not come easily for some of us, especially the control freaks and type-a weirdos of the world.

but surrender doesn't have to be a negative thing. it doesn't have to imply weakness or a lack of caring, or whatever other unflattering associations you might have with the idea. it doesn't mean giving up. surrender can mean just letting yourself be where you are, not pushing as hard as possible just to prove something to an old version of self or your mom who you don't even talk to anymore or your high school english teacher who said you didn't apply yourself or whatever else echoes in your head when you feel like you're not doing enough.

surrender can just be acknowledgement. it can be recognizing a truth, instead of denying it or fighting against it. it's a laying down of arms, even if the only person you're really fighting against is yourself.

because let's face it — there's no denying that we all need rest, even if it feels like we can't possibly take it, even if it feels like our world will crumble if we aren't holding it up every moment of the day. if you don't choose to rest when you need to, rest will demand its due at a time that is far less convenient. and if this feels vaguely threatening, well, good.

rest is not optional.

in case you haven't picked up on it yet, this isn't an essay about how to "hack rest." that's not my deal, and it's also not really possible (no matter what the tech bros say). instead this is an essay that's meant to encourage you to build rest into your life, starting with this customizable tarot spread that serves as a kind of personalized rest menu, with suggestions from the deck.

the rest menu is something we came up with during our podcast conversation on rest, and it's something that i think we could all use in our lives. just like putting a list of easy snacks or meals on your fridge for days when you're too overwhelmed or hungry to figure out what to eat (this is really helpful and actually works!), or making a list of gentle ways to take care of yourself if you're feeling activated or triggered (something i recommended in my recent two-week grief reflection container), a rest menu is something you create when you feel okay, that you can use in moments when you feel not okay.

it's really a way of showing your future self love and compassion. think of it as a gift to your exhausted body or spirit or creative muse, something that these aspects of self can turn to when they aren't sure what to do.

i would suggest choosing an activity or two for each of the seven kinds of rest: physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, creative, social, and sensory. if you like, you can connect these activities or exercises with specific tarot cards, ones that might serve as a shorthand for the kind of way that you want to take care of yourself — or a guide into that specific flavor of rest that you can expand and adapt as you go.

wanna see what i mean? here's my rest menu:
-physical / hanged one: slowing down or stopping entirely, stretching, gentle movement, inversions, cuddling or physical touch
-spiritual / star: getting quiet, listening, pulling cards for myself, being outside in nature, letting myself cry or grieve
-emotional / temperance: embracing feelings of messiness or fracture, balancing expression with absorption, literally being near water or fire
-mental / four of swords: pacing, reading or watching something that i didn't create, putting my phone away, giving myself permission to not write
-creative / ten of wands: playing video games or board games or d&d, making something that no one will see, prioritizing laughter, listening to music
-social / three of cups: texting a friend, actually telling someone how i'm doing, showing care to a loved one, rescheduling something if possible
-sensory / nine of pentacles: taking a hot shower or long bath, ordering dinner or dining out, changing the bedsheets, giving myself a facial, drinking good wine

your rest menu might look completely different — and honestly, i love that. it should be tailored to you, to the experiences and desires and comforts that actually work for you. but even just the process of making this menu loosened something for me, like i was giving myself future permission to not keep trying to solve the same problem over and over.

what i love about all of this, and what you hope you embrace wholeheartedly, is that changing your attitude to rest can trigger major transformations. when you surrender to your need for rest instead of trying to micromanage or deny or refuse it, when you show yourself care by making rest something mandatory instead of something optional, you can actually start to figure out what truly recharges and revitalizes you.

and the thing is, when you let yourself sink into rest fully, it actually does work. you feel rested. (sounds fake, i know, but it's true.)

it's another way of caring for yourself: learning to recognize and respond to your own needs, instead of scolding yourself for having needs at all. if you're someone who struggles to show yourself compassion and kindness, or you have trouble being patient with other people when they actually do prioritize rest for themselves, this kind of work can be really deeply important.

and as we move into the new year, as we prepare for our second year of the second trump administration, we are going to need to stop bullshitting our way through rest and actually take care of ourselves and the people around us.

i know that this world is hard and big and so scary. i know that rest can feel like it's a selfish waste of time. i know that change and surrender are terrifying concepts.

and i also know that i'm a better wife, and friend, and neighbor when i'm rested. i know that my creative work is stronger and braver and more infused with magic when i'm rested. i know that my spirit finds it so much easier to hear clear messages when i'm rested. i know that my body aches less, my heart feels a little lighter, my mind feels a bit sharper when i'm rested.

and i know that i'm a lot less stressed about the dishes, or the groceries, or the state of the house when i'm not walking into walls with exhaustion. i know that i'm much better equipped to break rules and write things and care for my community when i am not running on fumes.

we are preparing to move out of a hermit year and into a wheel year. (and yes, you'll get an entire juicy piece on the numerology of 2026 in january, just like in years past!) and this is a big shift, as we're moving from one nine-year cycle into another. this isn't just the changing of a calendar year — it's also the initiation of a new journey.

do you want to go into this journey armed with tools that help you treat yourself and those around you with compassion, dignity, care, respect, and generosity? i know i do. friends, it all starts with rest.

so as we move into december, how can you commit to rest this month? how can you prioritize resting, in different ways? how can you encourage those you love to rest when they can, modeling that behavior in your own life? and how can you begin to experience the surrender of rest in a way that ultimately expands your own capacity for compassion and care?

wishing you a restorative, empowering, intentional december, friends.

don't forget that in addition to my tarot for impossible times journaling series which begins on december 13th, i've also got my annual january journaling series starting on january 3rd! learn more and snag your early bird discount here: