PACEs Connection's Staff honors Labor Day with Rest

The PACEs Connection team will be taking a week of rest following the Labor Day holiday on September 5th. We will be out of the office from September 6th -9th. We will not be checking or responding to emails or calls. We will not be publishing the Daily Digests and Weekly Roundup during this time.

Our tradition of changing Labor Day to Labor Week was in response to the tremendous stress that came at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2020 our team has been overwhelmed. Two years later, the Covid-19 pandemic (and all the stressors that come along with it) is still with us. We are mourning our pre-Covid lives. In addition to Covid-19, our team members have lost loved ones and friends over the past two years.

As an organization striving to be trauma-informed and healing-centered, it is important for us to lead by example. We believe that regular rest is essential in our field of work and is especially important now, in particular, as the collective trauma of 2020 still lingers and is still impacting our collective mental health.

Taking a whole team break will reduce stress for individuals since we won’t be thinking about all of the emails, tasks, and projects piling up. The collective pause means the work train is stopping until we all get back on it again together.

We invite you to explore the idea of collective care by Lisa Chamberlain and of The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun. Collective care shifts the onus of mental health hygiene away from the individual and towards the organization. This aligns with what we know about the social determinants of health. White supremacy culture demands that we stay busy, maintain a sense of urgency, and value quantity over quality, among other demands. These characteristics ultimately perpetuate the patriarchal, colonial, and unregulated capitalist systems that can and have historically dehumanized people. Some people have been especially impacted based on delineations made by race, ability, gender, sexual orientation, beliefs, or religion.

Thanks so much for honoring our week of rest. We have been inspired by other organizations to make this choice, and we hope we inspire some of you to make the same commitment to the health of your people, organizations, and communities.

                                                                                      With Love & Justice,

                                                                                           The PACEs Connection Team