Last year, Jena Burgess Singleton knew something needed to change when her hands started to shake.
The 38-year-old single mother was working for a large global tech company while raising her young daughter and handling aging parents. It all became too much.
“It got to the point where my nervous system was really fried and I would shake constantly,” Burgess Singleton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She went to see her doctor, who told her it was critical that she rested.
So, she did just that. She took a three-month leave of absence from her job. “It was like the first time that my brain had been able to really think clearly,” she said.
She decided not to go back to the tech company and instead embarked on a business helping other women rest. This fall she opened The Rest Spot, a private women’s-only club housed in a small cream brick house on an acre of land in Smyrna. Burgess Singleton has raised at least $170,000 for the business so far, from 13 female investors.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
The space was built to help women embrace seven types of rest: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory and creative.
For mental rest, there is a suite members can use twice a month with a large bed and amenities like eye masks and melatonin spray. The house also has a lounge where no work is allowed during business hours. Instead, with the sounds of soft spa music and bubbling water playing in the background, members are meant to curl up in the armchairs and read, draw, color, watch something on their laptops — just relax.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
There is also a small cafe/co-working area where members can work or socialize. They can order $15 meals made by a private chef once a week. The chef also caters the weekly social hour on Thursdays, when members and their friends can meet each other with child care provided.
In the backyard are mini prototypes of larger spaces that Burgess Singleton hopes to add to The Rest Spot in the future. There’s a creative suite, sensory suite and the kids’ club. More spaces are in the process of being built.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Burgess Singleton envisions women using The Rest Spot in the same way they do a gym, where it’s built in to their lifestyle, they come regularly and say, “All right, I had my Rest Spot. I did my 90 minutes of rest,” she said.
Basic membership is $89.95 a month and gives women access to the amenities during business hours. Premium membership is $135 a month for 24/7 access, as well as two guest passes a month. Both memberships come with an hour and a half of child care every visit and there are no extra fees if you have more than one child. Members must be present at the club to use the child care.
‘We are your village’
Burgess Singleton said another purpose of the business is for it to be a support network for mothers.
“We are your village that you were supposed to have to help support you,” she said.
For Epiphany Wells-Booker, The Rest Spot’s first member, she was looking for a place where she could just be herself. The 31-year-old has a 2½-year-old daughter and another child on the way.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
“It’s just my husband, my daughter and I,” Wells-Booker said. “We really don’t have, like, a village here. … This place not only offered the child care, which was a huge plus, it also offers an area for me to just come and relax.”
And Wells-Booker’s story isn’t unique. The 11-county metro Atlanta area has added more than 250,000 residents from April 2020 to April 2024, according to figures from the Atlanta Regional Commission.
For transplants who come to the area without family close by, they bear a different burden of child care. As a stay-at-home mom of three young children and no family in the area, Ashley DiSarno was tired. She heard about The Rest Spot from a local moms Facebook group and decided to check it out.
“I need a rest, so I came here … and thought it was perfect,” DiSarno said. As a member, she knows her kids are taken care of while she can take a break. She also uses the creative suite to meet clients for her permanent jewelry business.
For Burgess Singleton, she isn’t just the founder of The Rest Spot — she uses the space just like other members do. She’ll use the rest suite when she needs to recuperate after getting sick, she socializes and finds community at the events and her daughter takes part in the kids’ club.
“I use this to be my best self,” she said.
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