Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, MSLS, Founder, Renewals.
(Activation notice: This post shares information about harmful workplace experiences and impacts on the body and may (re-)surface negative memories and/or associated emotions. Please take the time you need to move through this post at your capacity, and contact your healthcare team for support).
In 2023, I shared a short Instagram reel promoting the seven kinds of rest, along with ways to engage in each. At the time, I’d just begun my intentional recovery after leading through and navigating a higher education landscape that was (and is still) grappling with how to center humanity and dignity and balance them with the expectations of capitalism. When I made that reel, I was very hopeful about ways I – and other library workers – could remix and apply these rest practices. A bit more than two years later, I am still identifying and refining my approaches. I recognize that while those established pathways are necessary, more context is needed, especially as we consider the interruptions to rest that workplace harm causes. This two-part blog will share an overview of invitations and interruptions to rest. Part 1 will explore causes of unrest and disconnections from rest; Part 2 will explore relationships between rest and trauma, recenter a recognized framework, and offer reflections inviting you to reimagine and cultivate collective rest approaches.
Interruption: States of Unrest in the LIS Industry
As library worker exposure to library values rejection, systemic harm, and compromised safety continue (and even while we try to protect targeted citizens in our communities), we need to revisit and to acknowledge the very real interruptions to rest practices – especially for truamatized workers and those with historically ignored identities. While established scholars writings on rest practices for these groups is available, the library and information science (LIS) industry continues leaning towards and normalizing passive-aggressive communication and resilience narratives. Consequently, we must recognize that pathways to rest may not be easy to access or practice, even if they are known. Low-morale experiences reveal that even when harm is not immediately present at work, harmed workers are actively anticipating harm. When they are not at work, they are thinking about the harm that may come to them when they return to the workplace. For BIPOC librarians navigating low-morale experiences, the threat of harm is so pervasive that active signals of rest are ignored due to their worries about being perceived as less-than-hardworking (See Also, Stereotype Threat). Acknowledging the spectrum of harm and how it presents, these interruptions have implications for not only for practicing rest, but for somatic awareness and activation when rest of any kind is attempted.
Interruption: Denying Rest in Library Workplaces
Exposure to long-term active and passive harm, vocational awe, and resilience narratives create internal narratives that cause overwork, heighten people-pleasing behaviors, and dampen intuition. If you tell yourself that the harm you’re experiencing “isn’t that bad;” if industrial values tell you to be “good,” but not to yourself; if you’re expected to produce and perform like others who may have more resources, it’s hard to think about boundaries, much less create ones that feel effective – and then build the strength to consistently apply them. There are more hurdles to clear as workers navigate questions about boundary-making – the first step to activating any of the rest types. We must recognize the internal narratives that tell traumatized library workers that they are not safe enough to consider rest practices and collaborate with workers to scaffold support and encouragement as they begin the non-linear journey of reconstitution and recovery.
Workers are often excluded or retaliated against when they engage in health-centered practices – even when they do so within the parameters of their workplace’s stated policies. Workplace wellness is a relatively new concept, and many organizations have policies that read as helpful, but are only tacitly so when applied. Moreover, many of the ways people care for themselves – within policies or informally – can be subverted or denied by authoritarian or toxic leaders and/or colleagues (and with deeper implications for identities who have been historically marginalized or ignored). Consider these examples:
- The administrator who endures macro- or microaggressions after salat.
- The worker who requests and receives an ergonomic personal work desk, and then is assigned to tasks requiring them to work away from that desk.
- The employee who resists taking on extra shifts, and is summarily excluded from important meetings during their regular hours.
- The worker who takes FMLA and whose position is phased out soon after they return to work.
- The colleague who eats and takes a walk during their meal break – and is surveilled, harrassed, or guilted for not coming back early.
- The manager who is told to not take “too long” of a vacation because they are the only ones responsible for their tasks.
Consider how myriad systems and behaviors – from funding to favoritism – may be leveraged by toxic employees or within a dysfunctional organization (or within a toxic department in a healthier organization) when an employee requests support for or engages in rest practices.
Another area that is implied with promoting these rest types is that rest can happen (more easily) when you’re away from the sites of unrest. But trauma doesn’t acknowledge where the body is now – it’s remembering that the body was threatened or was harmed, and is trying to signal to the body that it must maintain in a state of vigilance even if harm isn’t immediately present (traumatized bodies prep for the danger that could return at any moment, from anywhere). What happens when rest is introduced to the traumatized body after a long state of unrest?
In Part 2, we’ll consider this idea by exploring links to trauma and (un)rest. I’ll also reshare a useful framework and offer reflections that can help harmed and recovering library workers – as well as those who’d like to improve their organizations through reimagined and/or revisited policies and procedures – cultivate incremental, authentic, and trauma-informed routes to supporting and enacting rest practices. For now, here are two reflective questions to think about:
Invitation: Questions for Reflection
- Which, if any, workplace behaviors or LIS industrial frameworks or expectations have interrupted your rest practice goals?
- What external messages or social/ethnic/cultural/economic contexts come with these frameworks or your responses to these frameworks?
Works Cited
American Library Association. (1999 – 2025). Book ban data. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data
Berg, J., Galvan, S., & Tewell, E. (2018). Responding to and reimagining resilience in academic libraries. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1),1-4. https://newlibs.org/index.php/jonl/article/view/805
Caldwell-Stone, D. (2025, Jan. 24). Libraries and immigration enforcement. Intellectual Freedom Blog. https://www.oif.ala.org/libraries-and-immigration-enforcement/
Ettarh, F. (2018, Jan. 10). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In the Library With the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Kendrick, K.D. (2017). The low morale experience of academic librarians: A phenomenological study. Journal of Library Administration, 57(8), 846-878 doi: 10.1080/01930826.2017.1368325
Kendrick, K.D. & Damasco, I.T. (2019). Low morale in ethnic and racial minority academic librarians: An experiential study. Library Trends, 68(3), 174-212. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/113621
Ko, M.E. (2017). Stereotype threat. https://ctl.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj17446/files/media/file/stereotype_threat_handout.pdf
Knox, K. (2024, Feb. 8). Protecting library workers: The ongoing battle for the health and safety of library staff. Public Libraries Online. https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2024/02/protecting-library-workers-the-ongoing-battle-for-the-health-and-safety-of-library-staff/
Miss Julie. (2025, Oct. 18). The call is coming from inside of the house. Hi, Miss Julie. https://himissjulie.com/2025/10/18/__trashed/
Reece, J. (2025, Nov. 15). Baltimore County reinstates 14 part-time librarians after abrupt mass firings. CBS News Baltimore. https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/part-time-librarians-fired-baltimore-county-public-library/