Rest as a Right in Miami: Final Retreat with Cohort 1

We recently concluded our first cohort with one last in-person retreat in Miami Beach, bringing us all together from across the country and Caribbean for a powerful convergence focused on visioning and restoration. Unlike previous gatherings, this retreat embraced a more celebratory and future-oriented outlook, centering the essential question: "what's next?"

The retreat's key theme of rest is a right permeated every aspect of the experience, challenging fellows to reframe rest not as luxury but as fundamental necessity for sustainable leadership.

We intentionally explored what we want to manifest in our lives six months from now. We let down our hair and relaxed as we wrote postcards to our future selves and practiced embodying rest in real time through spa sessions, leisure activities, and deep reflection. You just had to be there! ✨  Our time together crystallized a truth we often forget: we cannot pour from empty vessels. As movement leaders, nonprofit workers, and community organizers, we've been conditioned to believe that rest is selfish, that taking care of ourselves means abandoning our people. But what if rest itself is revolutionary? What if modeling sustainable care for ourselves is exactly how we create the world we're fighting for?