What does it mean to truly rest as an act of resistance? How do we balance the need for individual safety with the urgent call for collective action? In a recent community chat, renowned mental health practitioner, writer, and organizer Gabes Torres joined Nkem for a deep, meandering conversation about activism, community, rage, rest, and the ever-present tension between individual and collective identity.
She opened up about the afterglow of several recent retreats with human rights defenders and climate activists in the Philippines—a space focused not just on rest, but on what Audre Lorde once described as the “uses of the Erotic” as life force. She reflected on how, amid the grind of organizing and facing oppression, nurturing relationships is foundational:
“The fundamental life force of organizing, of human rights defense, really is relationships… If we don’t nurture and protect that, we’re missing the point.”
Nkem and Gabes dove into the nuance of rage—a powerful, necessary fuel for activists, but one that, without a safe container, can be dysregulating or even destructive. They spoke about the importance of not just embracing the fullness of rage and grief, but also consciously building spaces where such powerful emotions can be held, metabolized, and transformed into generative action:
“We need to access, express that rage in a contained space. [Otherwise], it can cause some degree of dysregulation without containment, without clarity and safety, really.”
The discussion touched on the dangers of confusing discomfort with unsafety, and how in some activist spaces, the language of trauma or safety can get tangled up with privilege and power:
“It’s time to examine one’s proximity to power, because that [greatly] affects your subjective experience of safety… Maybe the places that feel uncomfortable are actually not unsafe… and these distinctions really matter.”
Gabes challenged the oversimplification of slogans like “rest is resistance,” especially when rest becomes a route for avoidance rather than renewal for action. She introduced her own framework: **Oscillation**—the idea that we must mindfully move between rest, processing, digestion, and resistance, always returning to action but honoring our need to cycle through the phases.
“Rest is only revolutionary if you are revolutionary—if it’s not all that you do… Oscillation is about sustaining ourselves, so that we’ll always go back to the resist phase.”
A pivotal thread of the conversation was the dance between “I” and “We.” Gabes, speaking from her cross-cultural experiences in both the U.S. and the Philippines, highlighted the pitfalls of both hyper-individualism and hyper-collectivism, inviting reflection on what true interdependence could look like.
Drawing inspiration from practices like Ubuntu (“I am, because we are”) and the lived wisdom of marginalized, frontline communities, both speakers returned again and again to the need for language and frameworks that connect rather than divide.
“The self is only possible in the context of community, and community is only possible in the context of self.”
As the discussion widened, Gabes spoke about non-linear world-building—imagining the future not just strategically, but as an act of dreaming outside inherited paradigms. She mentioned learning from the rhythms of nature, and how proximity to the land and ocean in the Philippines has profoundly shifted her understanding of resilience, mutual aid, and connection.
“We’ve been doing [mutual aid] all our lives… but didn’t even have a word for it. It has a different way of moving me, of revitalizing me to stay in the struggle.”
In a world that demands clarity, this conversation was an invitation to honor uncertainty, embrace oscillation, and root our activism—now more than ever—in courageous relationships and collective dreaming.
Want more conversations like this? Join the Lumos Community—it’s free for the first month, and these chats are the kind of thing you’ll want to carry with you long after they’re over.
