Making Space to Pause

Creating space to pause is vital to our well-being and to the ability to make the impact we want to create by participating meaningfully in change.

Pausing gives us the ability to consider how our words and actions align with our values, to shift our priorities to what’s most important in the moment, to process what we’re giving and receiving, and to rest.

But pausing isn’t accessible in the same ways to everyone. In many ways, the ability to pause is a privilege.

Erica and India discuss the intersection of pausing and privilege, with some key examples of how those concepts have shown up in their lives and in the lives of people around them.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

• Why the word “pause” is central to the Pause on the Play® brand and podcast

• What it means to pause in our lives

• How privilege shows up in the ability to pause

• The intersection of pausing, privilege, and generational trauma

Pausing to Go Deeper

On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Erica Courdae (she/her) says she can’t recall that she and India Jackson (she/her) have ever broken down for the podcast the reasoning behind naming the brand Pause on the Play® or dug into the Pause piece.

India says they covered it very early on, but that it’s probably due to be revisited and to go deeper on how pausing intersects with DEI work.

Erica says that pausing is a privilege, and it’s important to break down just what pausing means, what privilege means in this context, and how those concepts interact and show up.

India says that the podcast came into being based on the flow of her conversations with Erica, where they would ask each other to pause and discuss topics further as a natural part of how they communicate with each other.

They realized that their conversations had insights and perspectives that were worth recording and sharing, whether in audio or written formats.

Pausing for What’s Essential

On pausing in a broader sense, India says she thinks about “pausing to think through the decision you’re about to make and, is it aligned with your values?”

Erica says it can also be a place to acknowledge that you don’t have enough information or emotional bandwidth to thoughtfully and fully participate in a conversation or situation in a way that will create a desirable outcome. Pausing can also be a chance to recognize that “this is not the conversation for now,” and reprioritize to focus on what’s essential in that moment.

India adds that pausing is also taking moments in your life to stop and care for yourself.

Erica says that so many of us keep going and pushing through without pausing to acknowledge or process our experiences and what we need to release or receive.

“We don’t pause to give the type of gratitude that we want to give…And we definitely don’t pause to have the level of integration of the lessons that we’re learning or the things that we’re releasing, and what are we replacing it with.”

India says there was definitely a time in her life where she didn’t even consider that pausing was an option. “It wasn’t something I witnessed people around me doing, meaning the people I grew up with, people in my friend circle–it wasn’t their norm.”

Pausing as a Privilege in Action

India acknowledges that sometimes pausing truly isn’t something that’s accessible.

Erica says that a specific example of where pausing intersects with privilege is in the concept of a gap year between high school and college, where someone with the financial means to do so can take time to explore the world in some fashion before continuing their education.

Erica says she has witnessed people experience huge benefit from being able to take that pause and learn more about the world and themselves, but it is a significant privilege financially.

India says in the circles she grew up in, not only was a gap year not a thing, but going to college was considered a privilege in and of itself, and she worked through college, even as a full-time student to financially support herself.

Erica says that privilege here is layered. “There’s the literal piece that you have the financial access and stability…This is your family being like, yes, go explore the world. There’s the privilege of knowing that things are taken care of and that you can go and do this safely and freely,” without worrying about whether you’re limiting your college options for when you’re ready to enroll, without worrying about supporting a household, or worrying about your safety.

India adds that there is privilege in having the support of your family for taking something like a gap year. It is a privilege to be free of family pressure and ancestral legacy. 

Erica says she can hear the whole family narrative in her head about what a gap year is and what it means, and how a gap year is a rejection of the privilege of going to college in the first place.

India says that for her, as the first person in her family to attend college, it would have been unthinkable for her to take a year off after high school, and that is the result of colonization and systems of oppression “that have led to that being the conversation that would be had with my family.”

Erica says in her experience discussing this with other Black people, “many of us felt like we had to work a lot harder. And if you had an opportunity to go to college, how dare you look that gift horse in the face? You better go.”

India says she can only imagine how life-changing having access to the pause of a gap year could be for someone, because it gives people the opportunity to intentionally consider who they want to be and what they want to do post-high school.

Because of that opportunity and potential, India says, “When I think about this example of pausing as a privilege, it’s like…how can we make a gap year more accessible to people?”

Pausing as a privilege also plays into the college experience of being able to perceive using those years to form relationships that will lead to post-graduation networks and opportunities.

For someone who has to work their way through college, or maintain a strict GPA to keep their scholarships, the ability to utilize their time that way isn’t as accessible as it to someone with more financial privilege.

Erica notes that on a different spectrum, people entering college after a significant amount of time after high school, whether due to influences in their personal lives like caring for a family or because of a desire for a career change, on the one hand will face stigma for being “too old” but on the other, there is privilege to be able to pause your life and go back to school.

But both she and India believe those choices should be celebrated. 

Erica says, “So you celebrate the 18, 19, 20-year-old for taking a break, but not the adult for trying to make adult decisions? That ain’t cool.”

Generational Trauma and the Ability to Pause

Erica says it’s important to acknowledge that pausing as a privilege shows up in many large and small ways in life, and it’s equally important to recognize that access to pausing is not equitable.

For people who have been historically victimized and marginalized, “we don’t have access to pausing because our lives have depended on not pausing very often. And so for us, it has to be a very strategic pausing because we feel like if we don’t, it might literally be life and death…It is embedded in our DNA from a generational perspective to not be able to access that pause because it feels like life or death.”

Erica notes that untangling that generational trauma may take professional assistance before you can access the concept of pausing.

India quotes Ixchel Lunar from their workshop “Decolonizing Time: Centering the R.E.S.T Recipe,” that “rest is a radical resistance.” And that statement applies to rest and pausing.

Erica says the ability to rest is another great example of how pausing as a privilege shows up. “When we think about pausing…it is whether or not this is something that you feel like you have access to in any and all ways, and the privilege of whether or not you have access to it in this life and whether or not your ancestors had it that is going to be a part of whether or not you feel like you have free and clear access to it.”

She says that being aware of the concepts of pausing and privilege, separately and intersectionally, is part of reconsidering your own normal and the normals of those around you. 

Erica says that access to pausing is also a chance for your nervous system to downshift and allow you to make choices from a place of more ease.

Finally, India asks, “What would be possible if more people had access to the privilege of pausing? How much more would we be conscious of how we're living our lives, how we're being in integrity with our values? Even [knowing] what our values are? How much we're contributing to white supremacy culture, to the problematic pieces of capitalism. If we had more access to pause, if we had more access to contemplate, to really tap into what our intuition, what our hearts are telling us, and the access to make shifts from there on out?”

Ready to dive deeper?

Join The Pause on the Play® Community for our newest curated exploration, Create Space to Take Care of Yourself. This evergreen collection of resources and workshops, including Ixchel Lunar’s “Decolonizing Time: Centering the R.E.S.T. Recipe,” journal questions and prompts, and the Allyship Meditation Sound Bath to help support you in taking care of yourself. 

Creating space to pause and care for yourself is a privilege, but it is so important when we do have the ability to create it. 

Learn more about this curated exploration and all the benefits of Community membership at: pauseontheplay.com/community