Time to Rest Easy — We Held the Line

How to rest, recover, and keep your strength for the work ahead.

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Dear friends

The crowds have dispersed, the signs are stacked by the door, and your body still holds the echo of voices that filled the streets. With such a strong turnout and no reports of violence or agitation, many of us are feeling relief, pride, even a sense of renewal. Take a moment to let those feelings land — they’re well earned. Yesterday asked a great deal of everyone who showed up — patience, discipline, courage — and the outcome reflects your efforts. Holding the line together, keeping focus without escalation, is no small thing. It shows what can happen when we move with care and clear intention, each person carrying their own steadiness into the collective.

The day after a protest moves at a slower rhythm, though it’s not quite rest. Your body is still adjusting — muscles sore, voice rough, sleep lighter than normal. The adrenaline that kept you alert yesterday takes time to leave your system, and once gone, fatigue will settle in. That’s part of recovery, not a failing. The steadiness you built leading up to the protest is what will carry you through this part too.

1. The Body Comes First

A protest packs a lot into a short space of time — the noise, the pressure, the emotion, the effort of staying steady and aware. It takes a while for all of that to settle, so adrenaline doesn’t disappear as soon as the rally ends. It can stay in your system for a day or more, keeping you tense even when the noise and movement have stopped. That’s why the first step in recovery is physical.

Eat properly, drink water, give yourself space to breathe, and rest when you can. If your muscles feel tight, stretch or take a slow walk outside to help your body release the charge of yesterday. These small actions tell your nervous system that the immediate demand has passed, and that you are safe again, allowing your body to settle.

2. The Mind Follows

Once your body begins to settle, your thoughts have space to catch up. The mind often replays moments from the day — take some time to notice what’s still active in you. The sounds, the faces, the moments that stand out. Let that happen, but keep it gentle. You don’t need to analyse or reach conclusions straight away. Give your mind time to move through the details at its own pace. Ask yourself what worked, what was hard, and what might need more attention next time.

Reflection like this turns experience into learning. It helps you see both the strengths and the stresses of the day — where people worked together, where things frayed, and where pressure showed. When you take time to look back in this way, it gives your emotions space to move and settle, rather than hardening into frustration. Perspective returns. You can acknowledge anything that was difficult without losing sight of what held firm, and carry both forward with a clearer sense of how to prepare for the next time. Anger stays useful instead of souring into cynicism, and disappointment stays honest instead of turning into blame. It’s what allows you to keep faith in the work and in one another.

3. The Heart Needs Space

Strong emotions don’t end when the rally does. Pride, grief, anger, disappointment, and hope can all sit side by side, surfacing and fading through the day. None of them are out of place. They’re signs that you were present, that what happened mattered to you. Let them move at their own pace. Take time to notice what’s still active in you. Writing a few notes can help you release those feelings, giving the experience somewhere to go instead of letting it settle into fatigue or frustration.

If you can, reach out to others who were there. It doesn’t need to be formal or long — send a message, make a call, or meet face-to-face if you can. Talk about what you saw, what you felt, what stayed with you after you got home, what you’re feeling now. Listen to what others experienced too. These small exchanges matter. They help the collective find its footing again after the intensity of the crowd. They fill in part of a larger picture, helping everyone process and understand the day more fully. And they remind us that what happened yesterday didn’t end when people went home, and that the work is shared. It’s part of a longer effort that keeps building each time people show up, learn, and come back together.

What begins as one person’s recovery becomes part of a shared rhythm. Each of us settles in our own way, but the steadiness we rebuild feeds back into the whole. The strength of a movement depends on how well we look after one another between the moments of action.

Making space for what we feel doesn’t diminish our strength; it’s what keeps strength steady and real. When we take time to talk, to listen, and to make sense of things together, we reconnect with what drew us there in the first place. That’s what allows a movement to endure — not just through conviction, but through care. When we reflect together, we rebuild trust and perspective. That’s how communities stay resilient enough to keep showing up, again and again.

4. The Work Continues

Yesterday’s No Kings rally was one moment in a much longer effort. What happens afterwards matters just as much as what happened in America’s public spaces. Taking time now to rest and reflect is how we prepare for what comes next. When our bodies have recovered and our minds have cleared, purpose sharpens again.

Decompression gives us room to exhale after holding so much. It helps the weariness ease before it settles into burnout, and keeps our conviction steady instead of stretched thin. When we give ourselves that time, our energy and focus begin to return, and the reasons we showed up in the first place come back into clear view. The steadiness we rebuild now becomes the foundation for our next steps — clearer judgment, steadier nerves, and the ability to show up again when we’re needed.

So take this day to rest, reflect, and breathe. Let your body recover and your thoughts slow down. Reach out if you’d like to, or simply take quiet time for yourself. What you did yesterday mattered — the courage, the patience, the discipline it took to stand together. Caring for yourself now is part of that same work. It’s how the strength built in the crowd becomes something you can carry forward into the weeks ahead.

The work carries on — steady, alive, and held by those who refuse to look away.

In solidarity, as ever

— Lori

© Lori Corbet Mann, 2025

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📌In the week ahead, I’ll be taking my own advice — stepping back to decompress from the rally and spending some time with family. The past week has asked a lot of all of us, and it feels right to pause long enough to recover properly before moving forward.

Later this week, I’ll share a short post about the Your Time Starts Now rebrand — what it stands for, and why the change matters. Then, next week, we’ll return to our Resilient Resistance focus with a piece on the physical effects of chronic political stress: how so many of the ailments we tend to write off as “just getting older” may have more to do with sustained political tension than age itself, before moving into what we can do to ease that strain.

We’ll pick up the Holding Hope theme again the following Sunday, 2 November.

(If you’d like to catch up on earlier posts, I’ve included links above, and you can find everything organised by theme on the Your Time Starts Now homepage — either by clicking the navigation headings or scrolling down through the page.)

If you’d like to stay part of this rhythm — to keep learning, reflecting, and finding your footing with others who care about the same things — I warmly invite you to subscribe. It’s a simple way to stay connected and to join a community that looks out for one another as we navigate what comes next.

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Take care of yourselves this week — we’ve earned some time to breathe.