"I don't believe I was put on God's green earth to join the struggle olympics." — Paul Owusu, founder and dear friend.
That line has stayed with me. Because for years I ran on empty and called it ambition. Long hours, high pressure, a body absorbing all of it — until it stopped absorbing and started breaking down. My immune system faltered. My skin cracked and flared with eczema. My body was sending me a message I’d been trained to ignore: you cannot keep going like this.
So TERRA-TORY didn’t start as a brand. It started as a refusal.
Rest is not a reward
We’ve been sold a lie that rest is something you earn. “Earn Your Leisure” is one of the leading stock investing podcasts. That title is triggering. That you can have it on vacation, maybe on a weekend if you’ve been productive enough to deserve it. That the rest of the time, exhaustion is just the price of being a woman who does it all.
I’m not willing to fold under that anymore. And I think a lot of women feel the same — Black women especially. We are so often the ones holding the business, the household, the family, the community, all at once, and told to be grateful for the chance to be depleted. That’s not strength. That’s a system counting on us to never stop.
I believe rest is a daily right. Not once a year. Not when someone gives you permission. Not when you accrue enough PTO. Every single day.
What rest actually looks like
I’m not talking about anything grand. Rest, for me, is any moment that lets my nervous system come down — anything that helps me stay regulated enough to run the business, run the household, or both. Sometimes it’s sleep. Sometimes it’s a massage. Sometimes it’s putting the phone and the emails on Do Not Disturb. Sometimes it’s smoking the joint once the kids are asleep. Sometimes it’s the skincare routine you’ve been slacking on. Sometimes it’s just five minutes where nothing is required of me.
But rest is also this: no longer giving a damn about anything (or anyone) that stands in the way of your needs. It means removing whatever shifts your energy or lowers its frequency. You know the feeling — someone walks into a room and the whole energy drops, almost into fear. That thing is a threat to your peace. It has to go. You cannot stay regulated, and you cannot keep the ship from sinking, while you’re carrying dead weight. So put down anything heavy enough to sink you, so you have the strength to build the business or raise the child.
Boredom is rest. So is logging off.
Social media is one of the first things I’d name as heavy. Your brain needs to be bored — it’s one of the most restful things you can do for your mind. You get more done when you’re not doom-scrolling, and when you get more done, you actually feel rested, free from the low hum of a to-do list you never got to. Life finally feels like it’s moving forward. The system we live in profits from us giving too many f—s about too many things, none of which leave room to breathe.
We are burning out our inner and outer children
I used to believe rest had to be earned — that you could only have it after a full day of work, as the reward at the end. I’m done with that idea. It’s the same thinking that’s poisoning our kids into hyper-vigilance, and now children are burning out too. What kind of society are we building? If we’re all tired, weary, and worn down, the future doesn’t look bright at all.
Stack chronic anxiety on top of mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion and you’ve got something close to a weapon — and it works like the boiling frog. You don’t notice you’re being cooked because you got used to the heat. You’ve operated in survival and stress for so long that you’ve started to call it normal. It isn’t.
Here’s the truth nobody says plainly: you cannot pour from a body that’s running on fumes. Regulation isn’t a luxury on top of the work. It’s what makes the work possible at all.
My moment is the shower
For me, that daily rest lives in the shower.
Think about it. No one is talking to you. You’re not talking to anyone. No one needs you. No one is calling your name. It’s just you and the hot water. For those few minutes, you get to be completely present — sorting through everything in your mind, or thinking about nothing at all. It might be the only moment in the day that belongs entirely to you.
That’s sacred. And I decided that if the shower was going to be my one guaranteed moment of peace, everything in it should honor that. Not strip my skin. Not rush me out. Something that turns a daily necessity into a daily ritual.
So I went back to my hands. I drew on the soap making my Caribbean mother taught me as a child and started making cold-process soaps and nutrient-dense body butters for my own compromised, dry skin. What healed in my kitchen became TERRA-TORY: plant-based body care for women who do it all and need products that actually replenish them.
What this space is
This journal is where I’ll keep telling the truth about all of it — rest, ritual, skin, and the quiet discipline of caring for yourself in a world that would rather you didn’t. Some weeks it’ll be practical: how to keep your skin from drying out, how to build a shower ritual that actually resets you. Some weeks it’ll be more like this one — a reminder that you’re allowed to stop.
There’s marketing, and then there’s care. I want this to always be the second one.
If you’ve been running on empty, consider this your permission to take the moment. Today. In the shower, or wherever you find it. Not because you earned it. Because you’re alive, and that was always enough.
— Kimberly, Founder, Rest Advocate
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