Hello gentle people,

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Rose June. I am a poet, writer, teacher, and digital creator. I am also a contemplative. This means I am living a life of awareness, attuned to the desire to be fully Black and alive. I am also someone who just survived a really hard year.

This past year was one of the most difficult of my life mentally and emotionally. I navigated a mental health crisis serious enough that a second hospitalization was on the table. Luckily I was able to avoid it, but not without a cost. The kind of cost that you spend months, slowly, paying back to yourself.

But I am making it through. In January, I found a part-time job I actually like. Come late August, I will take on an additional role at that job, bringing me to full time status. But as it stands currently, my job runs September through May, which means this summer I will be without income.

Womanist theologian Katie Geneva Cannon named something I have spent years dwelling in: “Do the work your soul must have.”

There is a work my soul must have. It is the deep, unhurried work of becoming. This summer, I want to do that work. And I need your help to protect it.

What This Summer Is For

I am calling it a sabbatical and I mean that word with full intention.

I want to lean into slowness. I want to rest without guilt. I want to have fun in ways that have nothing to do with output or optimization. I want to commit to the radical act of not grinding.

I hold two master's degrees from Boston University School of Theology, a Master of Divinity and a Master of Sacred Theology. My thinking lives at the intersection of womanist theology, Black feminist thought, spiritual formation, trauma and disability wisdom, and digital wellness. For over four years I have been showing up, weekly, through everything, writing and creating through A Gentle Landing for a community of over 1,800 readers. This past year, I spent time in three different fellowships to enhance my public work.

I have spent a long time finding my identity through work. I am actively always resisting getting another credential. This summer I want to practice something different: finding myself through rest, healing, and play.

Here is what this summer holds:

Resting genuinely, unapologetically, without guilt
Singing loudly. Playing guitar. Practicing calligraphy. Being soft.
Reading deeply and writing carefully without focusing on outcomes (though it would be nice to produce a book proposal)
Spending 2-3 weeks in residency at a retreat center learning from the land and writing
Taking a class on Haitian Kreyòl for dyaspora speakers like myself and gently building upon my work of poems and essays for Haitian-Americans.
Contributing to The Rest Stop, a womanist community project I'm building with my collaborator Bethany Nicole, because it is the work my soul must have to build community with other Black women, femmes and nonbinary people.

Come Bear Witness:

I'll be documenting the journey of sabbatical rest on my YouTube channel, A Gentle Landing. It is my hope to share it as testimony, providing an honest look at what it means to choose yourself after a hard year. I want to showcase the slow work of becoming exactly who you are. As I share, I hope to create what inspires softness in others, helping others dream of their own sabbaticals or to practice rest within the margins of their days.

You can also follow my writing (for now) on Substack.

The Numbers

$7,000 is roughly what I earn in three months at my current part-time role. This campaign covers my basic living expenses for the summer while I am without income. I am also factoring in GoFundMe's processing fees so that what reaches me covers what I actually need.

When you donate, GoFundMe will offer you the option to cover the processing fee at checkout. If you're able to check that box, every cent of your gift lands with me. But never let that stop you from giving what you can. Any amount is an act of love.

If I don't reach my goal: I am still exploring summer employment while fundraising. Whatever is raised will go toward rest and healing. I also carry medical debt from my 2023 hospitalization that I have been slowly paying down.

Why Community Funding?

I believe in mutual aid as a practice, not just a principle. I have shown up for others. I am asking my community to show up for me.

I have been living paycheck to paycheck since January. My hard season last fall depleted what savings I had. I am carrying medical debt from my 2023 hospitalization. I am not asking from a place of abundance.

For four years I have been writing, thinking, and creating in public. The essays, the reflections, the community offerings, all of it freely given, week after week. That is four years of unpaid intellectual and spiritual labor. Authors get advances. Academics get sabbaticals. Nonprofit leaders get grants. I have been doing serious work without any of that infrastructure, and I have done it faithfully.

This campaign is, among other things, compensation for that: rest as back pay. Community funding as the infrastructure that was never offered to me by institutions.

When you give to this campaign, you are not a donor. You are a co-laborer. You are saying: this Black queer disabled woman's life matters. Not their output, not their productivity, not what they produces for others.

Give what you can. Share this with someone who believes in rest as a radical act, in Black women who deserve softness, in the holy work of coming fully alive.

Come bear witness to a gentle landing.

Arlington, MA