Repeat after me: A better world starts with the best version of me.
Sounds a little self-centered, doesn’t it? Well, I want you to embrace that feeling for a moment. Let it settle into your body and make itself comfortable. Because I’m here to help you understand how focusing on your own health and wellness can lead to a better world.
Self-care. Say it out loud.
What Is Self-Care?
Self-care means asking yourself what you need and following through on the honest answer. Self-care can be as simple as getting to bed earlier on a work night, or as hard as taking a look at some of the habits you’ve created for yourself and their long-term effects.
Self-care is essential. It’s human work we all need. Not just the activists among us, but every one of us who’s been paying attention for the last few years and watching our communities come apart. We all feel the weight of this time we’re living in, and we are all being called to do our part to ensure a more perfect Union.
Self-care is essential. It’s human work we all need. Not just the activists among us, but every one of us who’s been paying attention for the last few years and watching our communities come apart.
If you’re a socially conscious individual, or simply someone whose awareness has been running on all cylinders for the last few years and have experienced burnout, secondary trauma, or compassion fatigue (yes, these are all real things!), it’s time for you to gather your sisters and brothers and declare that 2019 is the year that you will learn to be a self-care taker so that you can continue to be an effective caretaker of our democracy. Being whole and meeting our own emotional and physical needs first, is the only way we will build the world we want to see in the future—together!
Self-Care is a Radical Act of Love
As a community organizer and political and social justice activist, one of the ways I know I can contribute is by sharing some of the self-care tools I’ve learned over the past two years. This “Self-Care for Politically Charged Times” series was borne out of my own personal plight with burnout and compassion fatigue—riding high and fully charged in 2016, sputtering through most of 2017, and, finally, experiencing complete burnout in early 2018.
I had reached a point where I needed some serious self-care and a personal recharge if I was going to have any momentum in time for the 2018 primaries. This experience resulted in a promise to myself that I would never go back to a place of ineffectiveness, defeat and malfunction—and a promise to do whatever I could to ensure that no one is left behind, feeling depleted, exhausted, and hopeless.
We are creating the world we want to see by sowing seeds of love. And that can only be done if we include love for ourselves in the mix. Our rallying cry for 2019 is: Self-Care is a radical act of love.
For me, personally, I’d continue that sentence by saying “Self Care is a radical act of love that increases my capacity for impact!”
But self-care means something different to everyone. That’s one of it’s most transformational and unifying properties. What will focussing on self-care allow you to do this year? What will your impact be?
We know that self-care is good for us—it increases our emotional and physical health, it builds resilience, and paves the way for kind, compassionate engagement with the world around you.
Self-care is not always fun, sometimes it’s boring, guilt-inducing, and very heavy. By prioritizing self-care you’re making a choice to nourish the core of your being, tap into your sense of humanity, community, and responsibility for our path forward, and communicate with compassion across seeming political divides so we change our future for the better. Are you ready?
The Five Rules for Self-Care in Politically Charged Times
1) Your “Self” is Bigger Than You
We feel guilty about self-care because it goes against everything we’ve been taught about being a good human being, let alone an effective activist. Self-care means putting ourselves first and we’ve been conditioned to believe this is wrong and selfish. Real change-makers are meant to suffer and endure hardship; proper nutrition, healthy relationships, and exercise are frivolous, right? Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai—these individuals are forever linked to self-sacrifice and suffering. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t have time for self-care!
The word “self” has a negative connotation in this context because it seems to be only about the individual. But we need to expand our view of the “self” beyond the individual to include everyone we touch: our families, our communities, the whole of the natural world. When we practice self-care, we hone our interactions with everything around us: we protect the world around us. Imagine the powerful transformation that would happen if everyone took care in this way.
Self-care is not a virtue. It’s the means by which you make your work consistent with what you want to create in this world.
2) Self-Care is Inclusive
One of the main issues with the way self-care is viewed today is that it’s mostly geared towar