Welcome to the Rest of Activism
Burnout Prevention & Recovery for Climate Activists
Access Burnout Support
A self guided, online course to resource yourself, your community and your work in the world. Learn more ->
Join an online community of environmental activists and professionals from around the world for weekly live workshops with Jo. Learn more ->
Invite Jo to speak and facilitate on wellbeing for your organisation or event. Learn more ->
Course: Deep Resourcing for World Changers
A self-guided journey to resource yourself, your community, and your work in the world.
Resource yourself, your community and your work in the world with this self-guided, online course. You’ll learn…
🌿A wide range of burnout prevention and recovery practices from mindfulness & breath work, to coaching frameworks & resilience theory.
🌿The radical origins of self care & how to foster caring cultures in your wider community & the world beyond.
🌿Where to go and how to continue your deep resourcing journey beyond this course.
The Rest of Activism Membership
Fuel yourself, your work & your life with joy.
The Rest of Activism is a burnout prevention and recovery programme supporting world healers and changers. With a focus on the climate crisis, but now open to all justice-focused activists, we meet each week with structured online space, workshops and guest speakers to help us…
🌿Wake up with a deep sense of purpose and awe of the world around us every morning.
🌿Grow in fierce love of this world every day, without feeling that the action we take is also taking over our lives.
🌿Finish our days with deep gratitude, even amid all that is uncertain.
Weekly Burnout Recovery and Prevention Strategies to your Inbox
Weekly exercises, research & resources to support sustainable activism.
About Jo
Hi, I’m Jo Musker-Sherwood and for six years I directed a small campaign to become one of the UK’s fastest growing climate charities influencing at all levels of government.
I loved it. Whenever I felt anxious about climate change, I turned up to my work feeling good that I could make a difference. Until, I didn’t anymore.
I worked more and more, but felt less and less satisfied. Funding pressures took a grip, emails mounted up, I never switched off. As I watched climate impacts continue to unfold across the world, I became jaded, cynical, hopeless. Then my body started talking to me. Before long, I was so burned out I couldn’t work and I found myself in and out of hospital with symptoms that doctors couldn’t get to the bottom of.
Work had been my antidote to my climate anxiety, and when I couldn’t do that anymore, I fell apart.
This is the heavier side of environmental work. And whilst my example is a pretty extreme one, it can affect anyone trying to do something good in the world.
But here I am, on the other side, with both my wellbeing and deep sense of purpose restored. Sure, I still grieve, get angry, have moments of despair. But it no longer immobilises me or takes away my joy. In fact, I have come to see it as a necessary part of it.
I now research resilience strategies for climate activists whilst writing, mentoring, and consulting for many of the UK's most influential environmental NGOs. You can find out more about my offerings below, and subscribe to my weekly mailings for free resilience strategies.
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