Rest Is Leadership: Reflections from the Fellowship for Liberated Futures Inaugural Cohort

What happens when frontline justice leaders are given permission — and space — to rest?

For the 17 Black women and femmes who made up the inaugural cohort of the Fellowship for Liberated Futures (FFLF), the answer was nothing short of transformative. Our 2025 Insights Report, Rest Is Embodied Leadership Practice, captures what unfolded across a year of retreats, coaching, and community — and what it means for the future of movement leadership.

A Critical Truth, Confirmed

From the beginning, FFLF was built on a bold premise: leader sustainability is movement sustainability. What our inaugural cohort made undeniably clear is that this isn't just a rallying cry — it's a framework for survival and liberation.

Fellows arrived carrying decades of internalized grind culture. Their self-worth was tangled up in overwork. Many were recovering from burnout and navigating real health challenges. They had been conditioned — by systems, by culture, by the nature of the work itself — to believe that rest was something to be earned, not a right to be claimed.

By the end of the fellowship year, that belief had been fundamentally dismantled.

The Journey: Four Stages of Transformation

Through three in-person retreats held in Arizona, New Orleans, and Miami, alongside sustained coaching and virtual community engagement, fellows moved through a profound arc of growth.

It began with awareness and unlearning — naming systemic racism, patriarchy, and capitalism as forces of rest deprivation and beginning to shed the belief that worth equals productivity. From there, fellows moved into embodied practice, where rest became less theoretical and more felt — grounded in sensory rituals, cultural safety, and the power of collective space.

The third stage brought leadership integration, as fellows began translating their personal rest practices into their teams and organizations — building strategies to protect rest, model it publicly, and resist white supremacy culture in their workplaces. And by the close of the program, fellows had arrived at transformation and commitment: leaving not just with sustainable personal practices, but with a deep conviction that rest is a political strategy for liberation.

By the Numbers

The scope and reach of this inaugural cohort speaks for itself:

• 17 total fellows representing 619 years of collective wisdom

• 3 retreats across 3 cities — Civana, AZ; New Orleans, LA; and Miami Beach, FL

• 15 coaching sessions and 6 virtual convenings

• 5 Resilience Reset meditation sessions

• Fellows spanning 4 domains of expertise: LGBTQ+ Advocacy & Justice, Climate & Environmental Justice, Food Justice & Land Stewardship, and Government & Energy Policy

• Geographic reach from the U.S. South, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, D.C., the Bay Area, the Northeast, and Barbados

What We Learned and Where We're Going

The insights from Cohort 1 are shaping how we move forward. Grassroots and movement leaders do intensive, long-haul work, and cultivating embodied leadership requires approaches that match that depth. In future cohorts, fellows will have access to coaches for the full program duration, and we will continue hosting three annual in-person retreats — because time together is where unlearning and transformation take root.

When we resource rest as embodied leadership practice, we do more than prevent burnout. We cultivate sustainable, joyful leadership across movements. Rest, practiced collectively, becomes a political strategy for liberation.

DOWNLOAD FULL IMPACT REPORT