Permission to Rest: What Happened When I Embraced Stillness

“If you are continually judging and criticizing yourself while trying to be kind to others, you are drawing artificial boundaries and distinctions that only lead to feelings of separation and isolation.” ~Kristin Neff

I was lying on my couch again, Netflix playing in the background, when I heard my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. Instinctively, I reached for my phone, desperate to appear busy—productive—anything but resting.

For months, that had been my routine. As the severe anemia from my adenomyosis and fibroids worsened, I found myself increasingly couch-bound, dizzy, and exhausted. Yet each time my husband entered the room, I’d …

“If you are continually judging and criticizing yourself while trying to be kind to others, you are drawing artificial boundaries and distinctions that only lead to feelings of separation and isolation.” ~Kristin Neff

I was lying on my couch again, Netflix playing in the background, when I heard my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. Instinctively, I reached for my phone, desperate to appear busy—productive—anything but resting.

For months, that had been my routine. As the severe anemia from my adenomyosis and fibroids worsened, I found myself increasingly couch-bound, dizzy, and exhausted. Yet each time my husband entered the room, I’d grab my phone and pretend to be working. Not because he expected it, but because I couldn’t bear to seem “lazy.”

But this particular day, three weeks after my hysterectomy, something shifted. When he walked in, I didn’t reach for my phone. I just stayed still, watching my show, drowning in guilt.

He smiled and said something so simple: “It’s good to see you resting.”

That’s when it hit me—a realization that would transform how I understood my own worth: I’m not a burden. I’m healing. I’m allowed to rest. He didn’t marry me for my productivity.

It shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was.

The Productivity Trap

I’d always been in motion. Walking, working, cleaning, planning, doing. Even after having my son in 2019, I prioritized outings and experiences, determined to give him what financial limitations had prevented in my own childhood.

My husband and I had carefully divided our family responsibilities—he worked longer hours at his job,