Rest & Reset: My Word of the Year

As the calendar turns and the world rushes forward with new goals, new plans, and new pressure, I’m choosing something different this year. I started thinking about my 2026 word of the year mid-2025 and after prayer, attuning, and questioning,

My Word of the Year is Rest & Reset.

This wasn’t an easy choice. I actually fought it.

After completing my doctoral coursework, every instinct in me wanted to push—harder, faster, further. I had spent years producing, persevering, and proving. Rest felt undeserved. Slowing down felt unsafe. Pausing felt like betrayal and falling behind.

But my body told a different story. Every time I tried to work into the night, she fell asleep.

My spirit whispered rest, and my mind tried to override it. Yet God, in His gentleness, kept inviting me back.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Jesus didn’t say earn your rest. He said, "Melanie, come to Me and I will give rest to you."

When Strength Becomes a Burden

As a Black woman, I’m intimately familiar with the Strong Black Woman narrative—the unspoken expectation to carry everything, handle everything, and need nothing. Strength masks as armor. Exhaustion becomes invisible. Rest becomes optional.

But research and lived experience remind us that strength without rest eventually turns into burnout, stress, and strain. While seemingly adaptive and protective, this banner of strength we wave can also lead to emotional suppression and mental health problems.

In other words: What once helped Black women survive the cruel agony of slavery, quietly interferes with our healing in the present.

But sis, rest is not weakness, nor is it a luxury or reward. Rest is restoration and our responsibility.

Why I’m Resetting This Year

Rest in this verse above is anapauo: “cessation, refreshment; to make cease from labor or movement in order to recover and collect strength.” Not a rest from work, but rest in work. With this refreshment, I can reset and regain balance.

Reset doesn’t mean starting over because you failed. It means returning to what grounds you. If I'm honest, I often finish as task, and start looking for the next thing, before regaining my ground, getting my marching orders and beginning again.

For me, reset looks like:

• Listening to my body instead of overriding it,

• Letting God set the pace instead of allowing productivity to lead & define me,

• Creating space for breath, stillness, joy, and reflection, and

• Honoring the seasons that follow long stretches of labor and grief.

In 2026, I’m choosing a rhythm over resolutions.

A Gentle Offering

From this season of listening and rest, something gentle began to take shape.

Rest & Reset is a 31-day guided journal organized into four intentional weeks—Rest, Release, Refocus, and Reset—with weekly reflection pages and grace days woven throughout. It’s the first release in my Life Beyond Anxiety Collection, created for women who want peace without the pressure.

This journal, now available on Amazon, is part of the work God has been forming quietly behind the scenes—an invitation to slow down, sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn to find safety in undoing.

As We Begin This Year

Sis, if you’re entering this year tired, guarded, or unsure—

you’re not late.

you’re not broken.

you’re not behind.

You’re invited. He says, Come. Will you?

May this be the year we stop fighting rest and start receiving it.

May we choose peace as a posture.

May we reset with grace.

Peacefully,

Dr. Mel