Kamala Harris deserves time to rest. We all do.
The National Day of Rest for Black Women on March 10 acknowledges that Black women — the most loyal voting block in the Democratic Party — need to focus on their own well-being and prioritize rest.
I’ve been a working journalist for more than three decades, and I’ve rarely taken a day off at the last-minute.
But I intend to take a vacation day on March 10. I plan to go completely off-grid that day. I will not respond to emails. Nor will I check social media. I also will not use that time away from work to catch up on errands.
I have zero plans. I don’t know for sure what I’ll be doing besides participating in the National Day of Rest for Black Women. This is an ugly time in American politics, and we need to recharge.
The last presidential election set many of us back. No other demographic came through the way Black women did for former Vice President Kamala Harris. We turned up and turned out. We did our part to help Harris become the nation’s first female president. An estimated 92% of Black women voted for her, proving ourselves once again the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting block. The disappointment many of us felt on election night was brutal.
“There’s been something brewing for Black women, especially since the 2024 election result,” Jasmine Ross, a psychologist based in Texas, told me. “We collectively decided that there needed to be a shift that happened. And the shift that has happened for so many Black women is a shift to prioritize ourselves and our communities and to prioritize rest.”
She added: “That’s exactly what so many Black women have been doing. This March 10 event signifies this movement that Black women are on to prioritize taking care of ourselves and resting.”
Organizers have planned similar observances in the past, but this particular one caught my attention partly because it is timed to coincide with the remembrance day of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who died on March 10, 1913. Tubman, an escaped enslaved African who made multiple trips south to free others, suffered a severe blow to the head as a child, which caused her to have sleeping spells throughout her life.
“She was known for her faith and her grit and her spirit around moving people to freedom,” Ross said. “But a part of her process was around taking time for herself, giving her body the time that it needed to heal.”
We know rest is important, but relaxation isn’t exactly built into the ethos of American culture. Most of us are tired. Gallup released a study last year revealing that 57% of Americans feel as if they don’t get enough sleep.
“Our nervous systems need to be trained to rest in a way that it hasn’t been,” Norissa Williams, a professor of psychology at New York University, told me on Monday. “We’ve been in survival mode for so long and it’s been so necessary that we’ve been on the go, go, go.”
She added: “We live in a capitalistic culture, so rest has become a commodity. Rest is a commodity for everyone, but it’s even more so for Black women, in my opinion.”
Williams mentioned the strong Black woman stereotype that has long been associated with African American women and pointed out: “That did not originate in our community. It originated in times of enslavement. It was how they sold us. And then it became something that was implicitly held that we were strong, that we were not susceptible to harm.”
I hope Harris is enjoying her time out of the public eye. It’s unclear whether she ever actually intended to attend Sunday night’s Oscar festivities. Instead of attending Hollywood’s most glamorous night of the year, the former California state attorney was at home with her husband and a bag of Doritos.
Doug Emhoff posted a photo of the former Democratic presidential contender in a kitchen with her hair up and pouring nacho cheese-flavored corn chips into a bowl. Harris wore a dark sweatshirt over a T-shirt and looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen her. Emhoff shared the image with the words, “Oscars watch party prep.”
She looked stress-free. Joyful, even. I love that for her. It’s not her job to lead the resistance against what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing. These are desperate times, but we can’t just dump that responsibility on her.
Since losing the presidential election to Trump in November, the former U.S. senator and vice president has mostly stayed out of the limelight, except last month when she gave a stirring speech after receiving the prestigious chairman’s award at the annual NAACP Image Awards.
She didn’t directly address what’s going on in Washington, D.C., but alluded to it, saying: “… we know exactly what to do because we have done it before. And we will do it again. We use our power. We organize, mobilize. We educate. We advocate. Our power has never come from having an easy path.”
Meanwhile, California’s gubernatorial race reportedly “is on hold” as voters wait to see if she will decide to become a candidate in that race. After what she went through running for president, I hope she takes her sweet time deciding what she does next with her life — if anything. I also hope Harris the former U.S. senator makes a point of getting plenty of rest in the meantime.
She needs it. We all do.