Top 30 Tricia Hersey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.”

— Tricia Hersey

2. “We must believe we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. It is one of our most ancient and primal needs.”

— Tricia Hersey

3. “You are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn rest. Rest is not a luxury, a privilege, or a bonus we must wait for once we are burned out. I hear so many repeat the myth of rest being a privilege and I understand this concept and still deeply disagree with it. Rest is not a privilege because our bodies are still our own, no matter what the current systems teach us.”

— Tricia Hersey

4. “Treating each other and ourselves with care isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to thrive. Resting isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human.”

— Tricia Hersey

5. “Loving ourselves and each other deepens our disruption of the dominant systems. They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted by what is not real or true.”

— Tricia Hersey

6. “Productivity should not look like exhaustion. The concept of laziness is a tool of the oppressor. A large part of your unraveling from capitalism will include becoming less attached to the idea of productivity and more committed to the idea of rest as a portal to just be.”

— Tricia Hersey

7. “Imagination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can do and use. – bell hooks.”

— Tricia Hersey

8. “Along with stealing your imagination and time, grind culture has stolen the ability for pleasure, hobbies, leisure, and experimentation. We are caught up in a never-ending cycle of going and doing.”

— Tricia Hersey

9. “Grind culture is violence and violence creates trauma. We have been traumatized deeply.”

— Tricia Hersey

10. “I am in awe at what our bodies can hold. We must lighten our loads. Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive. We must rest.”

— Tricia Hersey

11. “We are socialized into systems that cause us to conform and believe our worth is connected to how much we can produce. Our constant labor becomes a prison that allows us to be disembodied. We become easy for the systems to manipulate, disconnected from our power as divine beings and hopeless. We forget how to dream. This is how grind culture continues. We internalize the lies and in turn become agents of an unsustainable way of living.”

— Tricia Hersey

12. “Release the shame you feel when resting. It does not belong to you.”

— Tricia Hersey

13. “Nothing we accomplish in life is totally free of the influence of spirit and community. We do nothing alone.”

— Tricia Hersey

14. “I refuse to push my body to the brink of exhaustion and destruction. Let the chips fall where they may. I trust myself more than capitalism. Our refusal will make space for abundance.”

— Tricia Hersey

15. “There is no rush. There is no urgency. Unravel from the lies of white supremacy culture. Rest is a meticulous love practice.”

— Tricia Hersey

16. “For Black people who are descendants of enslaved Africans via the Transatlantic Slave Trade and chattel slavery, consider the fact that your Ancestors built this entire nation for free with their stolen labor. Use this knowledge to tap into what they have already done, so you don’t have to grind yourself into oblivion now.”

— Tricia Hersey

17. “One day I hope we can all deprogram from the lie that rest, silence, and pausing is a luxury and privilege. It is not! The systems manipulated you to believe it is true. The systems have been lying and guiding us all blindly to urgent and unsustainable fantasies. We have replaced our inherent self-esteem with toxic productivity.”

— Tricia Hersey

18. “Marginalized women, specifically Black and Latina women, make up the largest group of laborers in a capitalist system. Our labor historically has been used to make the lives of white women less hectic and more relaxed.”

— Tricia Hersey

19. “Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. As long as we refuse to address fully the place of love in struggles for liberation, we will not be able to create a culture of conversion where there is a mass turning away from an ethic of domination.”

— Tricia Hersey

20. “You must resist anything that doesn’t center your divinity as a human being. You are worthy of care.”

— Tricia Hersey

21. “Capitalism deserves to be resisted and disrupted. It is a violent, global force that constantly steals our time and power. It is not redeemable and has always been a demonic force pushing divine bodies to the edge.”

— Tricia Hersey

22. “Capitalism was created on plantations. The roots of it are violence and theft.”

— Tricia Hersey

23. “You are not unworthy. The systems are unworthy.”

— Tricia Hersey

24. “When we function thinking only of ourselves and believing we can do it alone, we create harm and create a container for more exhaustion.”

— Tricia Hersey

25. “Take up space. Be risky in your observations. Be a maroon. Decide you ain’t ever going back to enslavement. Take a nap to receive a Word from your Ancestors. Be subversive. Embrace radical love that is outside the confines of tradition. Be suspicious of everything they taught you. Carry a research notebook. Be curious. Resist. Rest.”

— Tricia Hersey

26. “The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities is an act of hope.”

— Tricia Hersey

27. “You don’t have to always be creating, doing, and contributing to the world.”

— Tricia Hersey

28. “When I take a digital Sabbath away from social media, I come back feeling smarter, less anxious, and tapped into an expansive energy I was unable to access while scrolling every day.”

— Tricia Hersey

29. “Grieving the reality of being manipulated to believe we are not enough, divine, or valuable outside of our accomplishments and bank account is a central part of our rest work.”

— Tricia Hersey

30. “Unlike white feminism, womanism holds space for race, class, and gender and understands the family and community of a Black woman are collaborators in the struggle for liberation. It seeks balance and flexibility.”

— Tricia Hersey

31. “I feel like a legacy of exhaustion resides somewhere in all of us, but specifically resides in the bodies of those who have melanated skin.”

— Tricia Hersey

32. “Possessing extreme faith is a practice in living on the edge yet feeling tucked in and protected. Once you settle into it, you gain power from the feeling. You become magic. You can soar. You can dream.”

— Tricia Hersey

33. “The end is a well-rested future. Our resistance is the balm for a deeply traumatized world.”

— Tricia Hersey

34. “We are more powerful than we believe.”

— Tricia Hersey