Since the beginning of time, women have taken care of each other. Our communes, our tribes, our covens. We share what we know. We lead by example. We show up. Creating a safe space is part of what we're wired for. It's maternal instinct.
Somewhere along the way, something shifted. We became more focused on achieving rather than nurturing.
Life isn't just about the hustle. I know because I lived inside hustle culture for years, girlbossing and networking and telling myself the exhaustion was the price of ambition. I've since learned the real cost.
The cost is your peace. Your ability to balance. Your ability to function the way your body was actually built to function.
Losing sight of what mattered taught me something else too. A lot of what I used to admire was a mirage. No one can burn the candle at both ends forever.
I'm happy with where my business is now. Content creating art, leading with creativity, and actually enjoying my time off when I'm not on set. If anything, stepping back has made me better at my job. It gives me focus. Attention to detail. Creative energy I didn't have before.
This year I chose balance over business. The result was my best business year yet. I'm working with clients I admire, businesses I believe in, people who share my values.
Burning out is actually what brought me to, Women At Rest. Because I started asking questions. How do women rest in the 21st century? I kept thinking about those Renaissance paintings of women reclining, at ease, doing nothing. Were they genuine? Or were those women simply told to pause just long enough for the painting, because otherwise they never would have stopped moving?
Who knows how many generations of us have been engrained to “do more”. To be there for everyone. To carry the world on our shoulders.
In the coming weeks I'll be sharing stories of women I've met who are holding down multiple jobs, children, careers, horses, all of it— all of them—are accomplished. Rest looks different for every one of them. I wanted to kick things off with one of the most accomplished woman I know, Lisa Rochon.
Lisa is an award-winning author, city builder, and mother of four. She founded Citylab, spent over a decade as the architecture critic for The Globe and Mail, and led design for the $65-million Canadian Canoe Museum.
She devotes a lot of her time giving back to community. Volunteering as a yoga teacher at the Y and to refugee women in downtown Toronto. Championing Indigenous arts and placemaking. Empowering women. The list goes on.
Lisa is also the founder of Tuscan Creative Lab, a small artists’ residency on an olive grove not far from Siena, Italy. Artists from around the world are individually selected to spend their time working on their latest project. Together with her husband, John Terry, Lisa hosts the artists, showing them the surrounding Renaissance hill towns or hiking through the property’s vast oak forest.
This is where Women At Rest began and where these photos were taken.
Lisa is back in Toronto at the moment, celebrating the launch of her latest novel, The Paris Thief.
I asked her what rest means to her.
"I write during the long Canadian winter. The stillness settles my mind and I can tap into a flow state. Early in the morning, after sunrise and a long walk on the wooden boardwalk rimming the edge of Lake Ontario, I sit with a coffee and open my laptop. One chapter a day. It often feels like jumping off a cliff, but I get the words down even if they are rough. Sometimes the roughest versions are the best. Tuscany is a place where all my senses are alive, where I inhale the perfume of jasmine and the lime tree flowering next to our 1713 stone farmhouse. I gaze at the vast protected forest and the rolling mountains in the distance. I hear the songbirds and, during the spring, the pounding of deer and wild boar across the olive grove. I'm invigorated and blissfully at rest."
