Claiming restorative rest from night sweats
Exhaustion is often praised most in women who are already carrying work, caregiving, household responsibility, and emotional labor. Hersey refuses to turn rest into another productivity tool; she treats it as bodily autonomy, imagination, and collective repair. Night sweats can make sleep itself unreliable, which gives her message additional urgency without making rest dependent on perfect nights. For readers rethinking what comes next, the book widens the meaning of recovery beyond sleep hygiene: pausing, daydreaming, lying down, reducing demands, and rejecting shame all count. It challenges the belief that worth must be continually demonstrated through output, usefulness, or endurance.
About Tricia Hersey
Tricia Hersey began deliberately napping during an exhausting divinity program in 2013, describing rest as something that helped save her life. Her studies of Black history, theology, and ancestral memory turned private exhaustion into the collective practice of The Nap Ministry.
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