What Is Self-Care Anyway?
I spend a lot of time talking about “self-care,” particularly when I am advising my clients, colleagues, and loved ones to practice it. I tell people to take care of themselves or give specific instruction, to “eat,” “sleep,” or “get outside.” The more I preach the gospel of “self-care,” the more I feel inclined to explore the term itself and its history. Sometimes, what we, or our clients are already doing by “showing up”, is in itself all the self-care that can be mustered at the moment.
The term “self-care” became a household term seemingly overnight, following the 2016 US Presidential election — an indication of the term’s political origins. I knew that just because the term had become a buzzword overnight, it did not mean “self-care” was a new concept. I had seen it before. In 2014 I spent a lot of time grappling with my own Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which for me meant reading a lot random stuff online, and “self-care” kept coming up in beauty/health/wellness columns in blogs and online magazines. From that context I had gathered that self-care was grooming for yourself and not to please others. But as the term gained more popularity I came to understand that self-care is anything you do for yourself to take care of your health — both physical and mental. Just about anything can be self-care, it is not the act as much as the intention behind the act.
Before Self-Care Became #selfcare
As a concept, “self-care” took its more modern shape as part of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements. Activists, specifically women of color, recognized that the less privilege you have, the less access you have to healthcare. And yet the less privilege you have, the more likely you are to want to fight to change the status quo. In order to stay healthy enough to survive, and especially to fight the current system, these activists recognized the need for “self-care.” Self-care was the intentional and radical act of self preservation. What made it self-care was the intentionality behind it. This holds true today.
[To read the rest of this blog post by Laura Khoudari, click here.]
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