In our Sleeping With… series, we ask people from different career paths, backgrounds, and stages of life how they make sleep magic happen.
If you follow Rachel Ricketts—educator, speaker, and author of Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy—you might wonder whether she sleeps soundly at night. Ricketts doesn’t lament about insomnia or any other sleep issues, but dealing with and trying to dismantle white supremacy as a queer Black woman can be all-consuming. It makes sense if you’re invested in her well-being.
Ricketts spends her days leading workshops, speaking, and writing about the systems of oppression that stifle Black and brown people. “It’s trauma work. It’s healing work. It’s liberation work,” she tells SELF. “And it can’t be done unless we are doing our own internal work to understand the full spectrum of our human emotions.”
Ricketts understands more than most that rest is an integral part of remaining effective. “I will not survive this world or this work if I don’t prioritize and center myself,” she says. Below, Ricketts talks to SELF about how she winds down, pampers herself, and eases into sleep—all before 10 p.m.
I am genuinely a good sleeper, but I’m a deep dreamer.
I can usually wake up and recount all the places that I’ve been and all the things that happened in my dreams. But I will wake up still quite fatigued. So I make sure that I really power down.
I start powering down early. At, like, 7:30 my phone automatically goes into Do Not Disturb mode.
That’s one of my main things, getting off of that phone. And I do a lot of really embodied and involved, heart-centered work day in and day out. I hold a lot of space, so I’m usually trying to unwind at the end of the day.
One of the things I’m trying to do more of is energy releases. To release pent-up energy, I shake my whole body out. I start with my head, I shake my arms, shake my legs, and I shake my feet—just to release the energy. Another way I actively try to disconnect from the day is to wash my hands up to my elbows.
Then I wash my face, which is actually kind of new for me.
I use OSEA Cleansing Milk, and their Advanced Protection Cream, which I’m obsessed with. And I will sometimes exfoliate with Keys Soul Care. I was gifted a bunch of their products. They have a Be Luminous Exfoliator that’s amazing.
Advanced Protection Cream
My main beauty routine is taking care of my hair, which is not something I used to do.
So I will spritz it with rosewater and braid it. And then I put on a silk cap, and that’s like an act of love. I try and do that as intentionally as I can because it’s reclaiming a part of myself that got lost for me. I spent all of my life hating my hair, like, really hating it. I have worn my hair natural since I was 15, but I still hated it. I still wanted it to be long and straight. And it’s neither of those things. So I’m taking the time to love and honor her. And in this pandemic she’s longer than she’s ever been.
I usually crawl in bed by 9:30, and I’ll read.
I just finished Cicely Tyson’s memoir, and everyone needs to read it. It’s so good. Or I’ll read anything by Octavia Butler or anything Afrofuturism. Sometimes my husband and I read books together, either side-by-side in bed, reading our own books or literally reading the same book together. We read Becoming by Michelle Obama together—sometimes I’ll read to him, or he’ll read to me. And he also goes to bed early. I even got him putting on face cream.
And then I meditate. I just have to.
I usually listen to a Lalah Delia meditation. She has a bunch of meditations on the Insight app. Another thing I’m learning is that boundaries are required in all facets of life. Before bed I talk to my ancestors and tell them when I need rest. I’m a spiritual person with an active dream life, but I’m still earthly. So I say, “I’m tired, I need rest.” My husband and I will put on some sort of stress-relief essential oil to help us sleep, like lavender or peppermint.
I keep a photo of my mother, who passed, on my bedside. I have a picture of myself as a child next to my mom.
I think it’s from my first birthday. I’m holding balloons, and I’m laughing. I try to look at that picture every day to remind myself that’s who I am. I’m still that really happy, joyous baby, and I try to connect with her as much as possible to give her what she needs. So having that physical representation of her, that photo, is super important.
It’s essential to take the time to honor your needs because it will serve you so much more in the long run than a skin-care routine. Skin-care routines are great, don’t get me wrong, but a boundary routine and intuition routine—spiritual hygiene, social care, and how we care for ourselves—are things we need to put into practice as much as our skin care.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.