It’s the Season 1 Finale of The Rest of Us! 

But this episode isn’t just a wrap-up or a celebration of this milestone. Host Dana Tenille Weekes invites you to redefine what it means to celebrate yourself in ways that align with your truth, your joy, and your rest. 

Dana walks through five realizations about what celebration now looks like for her after self-reflection on why she hasn't celebrated her birthdays, milestones, and herself in ways that were "sufficient" to society. She even contends with Merriam-Webster's definition of "celebrate" (although she loves Merriam-Webster and their social media account). 

This episode reminds you that celebrating yourself shouldn't be performative. This is your permission slip to experience self-recognition, joy, and gratitude in your own way. 

Dana’s Five Realizations About Celebration:

1. “Notable” moments are small and personal – They are the things about yourself that, if you don't note them, you wouldn't fully appreciate your growth and progress.
2. Celebration is often a private act – Not everything needs to be shared publicly because we're beings and not brands.
3. Community matters – Being seen by people who see your nuances and full humanity is a celebration.
4. No Longer Forgoing Joy or Happiness – You do not have to sacrifice feeling joy when carrying other emotions that feel like the complete opposite.
5. Gratitude is the greatest form of celebration – Gratitude allows you to celebrate yourself (and others) in the present moment without the desire to change anything about who you are.

Gratitude 

Dana ends the episode by thanking a few people who helped her on this podcast journey, including Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever, Sagheer Muhammad (podcast producer and editor), and Eric Ramia (virtual personal trainer).

Special Announcements:

🎉 That’s a wrap on Season 1! But Dana isn’t going far. Here's how to stay in the loop:

🔔 Subscribe to The Rest of Us  (Podcast) on Substack, where Dana will post afterthoughts, writing prompts, community updates, and behind-the-scenes reflections. This is new for the Rest of Us, so you won't see momentum (a single post) for a bit of time! 

📱 Follow The Rest of Us on Instagram ➡️ @therestofus.podcast

🗓️ Season 2 returns in February or March 2026. Until then, listen or revisit episodes, celebrate yourselves, and rest, friends!

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
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• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

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• @therestofuspodcast

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• Dana Tenille Weekes

We use apps to save time, outsource errands, and even boil water in under a minute, yet we still claim we “don’t have time.” In this second-to-last episode of Season 1, Dana Tenille Weekes challenges our cultural addiction to speed, noise, and endless doing with a simple but powerful invitation: make time to do nothing. 

Dana explores rest by reclaiming three undervalued states of being:

• Boredom
• Silence
• Slowness

By the end of the episode, Dana takes us through a five-step reflection exercise to shift our mindset around what it means to “be” and the power it holds.

This episode isn’t about escaping or avoiding life. It is about waking up to your own presence.

💡 Key Takeaways

• Boredom is often the agitation you feel when you can't sit with yourself.
• Silence is part of the natural rhythm of our lives we tend to erase.
• Slowness distances us from being reactive beings.

✍️ Reflection Exercise (5 Prompts)

1. What narrative do you tell yourself that makes you hesitant to say "yes" to boredom, silence, or slowness?
2. What do you need to unlearn about this narrative?
3. What new narrative can you tell yourself when the old narrative emerges?
4. What action can you take to transform the new narrative into behavior?
5. When are the moments you'll need to take action?

📢 Two Special Announcements

🎉 This is the second-to-last episode of The Rest of Us. We are wrapping up Season 1 and will return in February or March 2026.

✨ The Rest of Us just launched a brand-new Substack, The Rest of Us (Podcast) (@therestofuspodcast), a space for:

• Afterthoughts and deeper reflections on episodes
• Guided writing prompts and rest practices
• Updates on future community events and guest appearances

📩 Be among the first to subscribe and stay connected during the off-season.

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

Stop and ask yourself this question: What are the rules that I live by that actually do not serve me? 

In this episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes invites us to question rules around us and our internal scripts that keep us tethered to unrest. 

Dana shares three categories of rules for listeners to rethink or examine closely that may seem obvious to identify, but not always: (1) "this is how it's always been," (2) unified fronts, and (3) shame or conformity, rather than understanding. 

By the end of the episode, Dana facilitates a reflection exercise to help us identify one rule that slowly erodes our sense of self and to embrace a new rule or mindset that can lead us to live the life we desire or want to maintain.   

🧩 The 3 Rule Categories to Rethink:

1. “This is how it’s always been.”
   • How unchallenged excuses, being incentivized to accommodate, and remaining stuck in perfectionism and binary thinking can make us overlook that we've embraced this rule 
2. Unified Fronts
   • How presenting a unified front without genuine unity or a genuine interest in achieving it prioritizes control instead of leadership
3. Shame and Conformity, Rather than Understanding
   • How shame and conformity center judgment, rather than understanding

✍️ Self-Reflection Exercise:

To help listeners shift to embracing rules that serve their lives, Dana closes the episode with a journaling prompt:

1. Identify: One rule currently shaping your mindset that is not serving you
2. Ask: What do I actually want to achieve despite this rule?
3. Reflect: What has kept me from realizing this rule doesn’t serve me?
4. Act: What is one practical behavior I can adopt to embrace a new rule that is practical, prioritizes my humanity, and gives me grace? 

💬 Memorable Quotes:

 "The problem arises when the rules governing our mindset do not serve us, and as a result, we have disciplined ourselves not to serve ourselves and our humanity."

"Unchallenged excuses will take over your life like a slow boil."

"It is often in the mistakes that the real possibilities are planted or where necessary pivots manifest."

"Some people believe that judgment is the knowledge and understanding you need. It's not. Judgment will remain regardless of whether you conform." 

"Accountability should lead us to learn, grow, and understand ourselves with an open and accepting embrace."

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

In this special live-recorded episode from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 54th Annual Legislative Conference, host Dana Tenille Weekes sits with Nia Ariel Davis Sigona to explore the relationship between rest and reimagining. 

Dana and Nia talk about the power and necessity of reimagining in adulthood. How reimagining is a way to world-build and live differently, especially when you have few or no models to reference. As part of the conversation, Dana and Nia delve into how rest helps to cultivate the courage to stay connected to your agency when tested, while making shifts and changing behaviors to live differently.

Before ending the conversation, Dana shares a guided writing practice with listeners to help us start reimagining and world-building our lives, allowing us to take one step toward our freedom and liberation. 

With deep wisdom, poetic reflection, and practical insight, Dana and Nia show us how reclaiming imagination isn’t naïve—it’s necessary. 

WATCH the recording from the CBCF ALC on YouTube.

✍️ Reflection & Writing Prompt (from the episode):

Dana shares a transformative writing exercise with two options:

1. The Values Prompt – Write about a value you say you hold, but are afraid to live.
2. The Dreams Prompt – Write about the moment when you've popped your dream cloud, and you're fully living in it. 

Listeners are then guided through a five-step revisioning process to bring their writing to life. Dana also challenges them to take just one small step toward making their written word real.

📍 About Nia Ariel Davis Sigona

Nia Ariel Davis Sigona is the executive coach and advisor behind Root + Bloom Strategies, a social impact agency helping leaders break down silos and collaborate for systems change.

An attorney by training and advocate at heart, Nia brings over 15 years of experience in executive leadership, policy, and advocacy across nonprofits and government. With her expertise in gathering changemakers to translate their good intent into collective impact, she helps mission-driven leaders develop skills, strategies, and systems to drive meaningful change.

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
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• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

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• @therestofuspodcast

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• Dana Tenille Weekes

This episode is Part 2 of Dana Tenille Weekes’ raw and resonant conversation with Sullivan Summer, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and dear friend of Dana's. 

Picking up where they left off, Dana and Sullivan's conversation deepens on societal conditioning, particularly how feelings such as guilt can undermine rest as liberation.

Sullivan also holds space for Dana to share the story behind her deep embrace of the question, "Whose mountain am I climbing?" Dana recounts the moment during her year-long journey of rest when she decided to take accountability for her role in her own suffering ... and it involves the phenomenal and beloved poet Patricia Smith. 

And before the episode ends, Sullivan asks Dana to focus on her fears. 

⭐ About Sullivan Summer

Sullivan Summer is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Her first poetry chapbook, Performance Anxiety, was published in 2025 through Black Sunflowers Poetry Press.  

Sullivan is a host for the New Books Network and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, as well as the African American Intellectual History Society. Her Substack, Additions to the Archives, is a space for conversation with authors, academics, readers, and thinkers committed to the preservation and expansion of the Black collective archive.  

You can find Sullivan's work on her website, sullivansummer.com, on Substack @sullivansummer, and on Instagram @thesullivansummer. 

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

In Part 1 of this two-part, intimate and thought-provoking conversation, Dana Tenille Weekes is joined by a dear friend and listener, Sullivan Summer, a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Together, they explore the layers of personal transformation, ancestral wisdom, and how societal and familial conditioning undermine the vivid details of who we truly are.

Opening with the first two lines of Audre Lorde's poem, "Change of Season," Sullivan asks Dana, "Were you once someone else?" 

Sullivan also raises the question of whether Dana's definition of rest is meme-worthy, leading into a dialogue about the power of reimagining during times when people feel compelled to resist. 

And, before the first part of their conversation ends, Sullivan asks Dana to deeply explore rest as liberation with the question, "To be liberated, must you first be imprisoned?"

Marking the 20th episode of The Rest of Us, this conversation between dear friends explores self-trust, unlearning, and learning to let the world catch up with you—a kind of rest that reaches far beyond self-care.

⭐ About Sullivan Summer

Sullivan Summer is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Her first poetry chapbook, Performance Anxiety, was published in 2025 through Black Sunflowers Poetry Press.  

Sullivan is a host for the New Books Network and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, as well as the African American Intellectual History Society. Her Substack, Additions to the Archives, is a space for conversation with authors, academics, readers, and thinkers committed to the preservation and expansion of the Black collective archive.  

You can find Sullivan's work on her website, sullivansummer.com, on Substack @sullivansummer, and on Instagram @thesullivansummer. 

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

In this important episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes questions the non-stop exhaustion that we call ambition: What are you chasing, and is it even meant for you? 

Through thoughtful reflection, storytelling, and three main points, Dana unpacks why so many of us are trapped in the "chase" (striving, following, and supporting - yes, even supporting) that steals our agency to live a life of expectations ... a life that was never yours. 

As a complement to the popular episode, Whose Mountain Are You Climbing? (Episode 5), this episode calls for you to stop running, settle in, and engage in radical self-honesty.

🔍 What You’ll Learn:

• Why chasing doesn't center you 
• How many societal systems or practices make you think you've taken hold of your life when you haven't
• How chasing requires you to believe in your expectations, rather than your being
• How living a life of "should" is taking away your agency and causing unrest 
• Why chasing begs the question: What are you really running from?

💭 Reflection Prompts:

• How much do you use chasing-like language in your life to pursue and prepare for blessings and real opportunities?
• How much of your life and decision-making is defined by systems or conditioning? 
• If you keep chasing, what are you really running from?

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

In this motivational episode, Dana Tenille Weekes speaks to the tension between knowing what you're meant to do and avoiding doing it. Her message? Just do the thing. 

Whether you're stuck in the loop of overthinking, waiting on the perfect sign, drowning in comparisons, or buried under the weight of others' expectations, this episode calls you out (with love) and invites you to stop planning and start acting.

If you've been waiting for clarity, certainty, or permission, this is your sign! (Although, as you'll learn, you don't really need another sign.)

💡 In This Episode:

• Why rest doesn’t mean avoidance or delay
• How overthinking masquerades as productivity
• The problem of waiting for a “sign” that fits your fantasy
• Why other people doing “your thing” is proof there’s room for you too
• What happens when you live under the weight of others’ fears or approval
• Why being stuck is often more effort than trying something new

🔑 Key Quotes:
“You don’t need a sign. You need to decide.” - Christopher Griffin (@plantkween)
"Don't wake up to watch other people." - Momma Weekes
“There’s so much unrest in hiding ourselves from ourselves.”
“Somebody out there is waiting on your way.”
“Sometimes staying stuck is the riskiest move you can make.”

✨ Reflection Prompts:

1. What is “the thing” that keeps calling to you, even if you call it nagging?
2. Where are you pretending to act by overthinking or re-planning something you already know how to start?
3. Whose approval are you waiting for—and is it really yours to wait on?
4. What version of “risk” have you normalized in your life that is keeping you stuck?
5. What’s one action you can start today to just do the thing?

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes

In this episode, Dana Tenille Weekes challenges the commonly overlooked confusion between niceness and professionalism and how that confusion can create a work culture of unrest.

Dana explores how avoiding the truth under the guise of being "polite" or “professional” leads to unrest for you and your colleagues. She offers a retake on the definition of professionalism: "Owning your responsibilities and the truths and realities of your work with a deep sense of care, requisite skills (and competency), and required pace."

Drawing on her experiences as a lawyer in Big Law and now an organizational health advisor, and incorporating a powerful excerpt from her article on professionalism, which was picked up by Business Insider in 2020, Dana also makes the case that etiquette is often prioritized over equity, which comes at a significant cost.

💡 In This Episode:

• Why “being nice” absolves accountability, builds workarounds for addressing real problems, and discourages problem-solving
• Dana’s definition of professionalism: care, skills, and required pace
• How truth, not etiquette, should define professional behavior
• The understanding that niceness and compassion are not the same thing
• A reading from Dana’s revised article "Want to Do Something to Enact Equity? Quit Being Nice at Work," picked by Business Insider in 2020

🛠️ Key Concepts:

• Care: Calling people IN (not out) with the intention to problem-solve and maintain respect
• Skills: Possessing the skills and experience to apply them (competency) to make informed decisions and manage complexities
• Pace: Being conscious of time, resources, and the necessary skills and competencies required to progress

✍️ Reflection Prompts:

1. When do you default to being nice to avoid, ignore, or distort a situation at work that requires the truth to be addressed? Why?
2. How can you shift from being nice to being compassionate in your work relationships?
3. Think of a truth you must take responsibility for. How do you deliver it with care, skills, and at the pace it demands?

📲 Resources Mentioned:

🔗 Business Insider Article or Instagram — “Want to Do Something to Enact Equity? Quit Being Nice at Work”

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

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• @therestofuspodcast

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• Dana Tenille Weekes

In this urgent episode, Dana Tenille Weekes speaks to the global unrest that is happening around us and what it means for rest as self-liberation. She talks directly to listeners who are opting to "rest" to avoid and disengage from the world's realities or those listeners who are refusing to rest for the "sake of the movement." 

Dana continues to build on the past two episodes, which focus on rest in the context of comfort, peace, and liberation. She also revisits the rest continuum and how people must cultivate spaces for the continuum's three forms of rest to sustain themselves and, in turn, any movement that progresses humanity forward.  

Dana shares:

• Why ignoring global unrest for the sake of “comfort” isn’t rest at all
• How your silence and inaction can deepen unrest for others
• Why truth is the undercurrent of her definition of rest
• The rest continuum - doing nothing/being, restoring, and liberating – and practical ways to incorporate these three forms of rest into your life today
• How sustained movements for justice require sustained people who are grounded in their agency and belonging

She reminds us that rest is not a retreat from reality, but a way to remain strong, conscious, and present in it.

✨ Key reflection prompts:

• Are you living in comfort at the expense of truth and others’ humanity?
• How can you protect and uphold truth using your strengths?
• What rest do you need right now to reconnect with your agency and belonging?

If anything in this episode feels like a message or a mirror, share it with someone ready to think about rest differently.

If this episode feels like a message or mirror, feel free to share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently.

🎙️ Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
⭐ Leave a 5-star review. (We are grateful for you doing so.)

Until next time, rest, my friends.

Connect with Us
Instagram:

• @therestofus.podcast
• @danatenilleweekes

Substack:

• @therestofuspodcast

LinkedIn:

• Dana Tenille Weekes