You see something absurd. You hear something absurd. You read something absurd = Yeah,TNTG. Posts tagged self care.
YOU RIGHT.
“ Self-care includes holding each other accountable because we are interconnected. Loving ourselves includes learning how not to harm each other. Loving ourselves includes disrupting violent patterns in our homes and community-building spaces.
—
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, quoted by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in a transformative justice workshop at Hampshire earlier this year.
Stuff I’m finding as I “clean” my room.
(via verbalprivilege)
“How to Deal with Triggers”
“ Many black women in the United States are broken-hearted. They walk around in daily life carrying so much hurt, feeling wasted, yet pretending in every area of their life that everything is under control. It hurts to pretend. It hurts to live with lies. The time has come from black women to attend to that hurt.
— bell hooks; Sisters of the Yam: black women and self-recovery (via afrafemme)
“ What I tell people is that a day is a day, a meal is a meal, a moment is a moment. Don’t let the fact that you did well at breakfast, or lunch or for one whole day overwhelm you into worrying that you have to live up to some standard you’ve established for yourself. Pat yourself on the back for your healthy behaviour and move on to the next moment and then the next moment after that. Leave each meal behind when you leave the table. Start afresh with the next meal. Know what you can do in the moment. Stop thinking about next week, next month, next year. Concentrate on the now, and if you do happen to slip at one meal, pick yourself up and leave it behind. Move on. You have the power to make a different choice the next time. It really is about taking it one moment at a time.
— (via kelsi-recovers)
An articled called, An End to Self Care, was recently published on Organizing Upgrade, in which an activist proposed bringing an end to the individualism behind “self-care” and, instead, called for community care.
The author, B. Loewe, made his point about not privileging the self over the group (part of which I agree with to some degree), he even cited women of color such as Audre Lorde (who said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”).
Yet, despite several points that resonated, a few of which a friend of his outlined here, B. Loewe’s response, along with the many thumbs up he got for writing that piece, also reminded me why I’ve made it a point to stay away from activist spaces; why the spaces in which I once found affinity ended up becoming one of the biggest threats to my mental health.
After a day of being repeatedly triggered and pissed off by the callous debate surrounding B. Loewe’s article, I needed to get this off my chest. So, here’s my emotionally drained, sleepy, and over it response. Forgive the free-form. I originally posted this as a semi-rant on Tumblr. (continue reading)
“ I have lived a life of pushing myself too far, well past my edge, partly to survive and partly because I had no clue where my edge was. And this is still true in so many ways. Ableism is so seductive, so alluring, so all-together-spell-binding, that I find myself erasing my edges and redrawing them, until I become laid up sick in bed or physically injure myself. I am constantly navigating access or connection, “my edge” or being with community. The pull of connection and relationships, is always what gets me. It excites me and makes me abandon my edge. It is the part of me that foolishly thinks I can be someone who can party hop, work a 14 hour day and then go and socialize, doesn’t need sleep, doesn’t need to bring my wheelchair. It is internalized ableism. It is the seduction of ableism. And it has been the only way I have been able to be part of queer people of color community and social justice community in any real way.
—
-Mia Mingus, Edges
feeling this so hard right now, though in different communities and in different ways as a white person who doesn’t utilize a wheelchair. but my life has been all about this lately and really feeling the vulnerability that comes with going over the edge and paying for it for weeks. i keep modeling my edge after my past and the edges of my able bodied peers and i need to stop
(via unheardofsongs)
“ In this cult of female martyrdom, where caring for our own well being is always last on our to-do list, it is easy to feel selfish when we do care for ourselves. But being kind to yourself, banishing negative body-talk, taking necessary time away from work, feeding your body with food that makes it happy, taking a morning for spiritual growth, doing one activity you enjoy just because you enjoy it—these things are not selfish! For so long, women have been socialized around the idea of “guilty pleasures”. Female pleasure–whether it is related to sex, food, or even an activity–must be categorized into “good” and “bad” categories. We are taught to feel “guilty” for “indulging,” but often these indulgences are normal, healthy expressions of desire. Common guilty pleasures include: food seen as “bad,” like cake, French fries, or chocolate; reading an erotic romance novel; skipping the gym to watch Netflix in bed; taking a bubble bath to decompress rather than tackling your mountain of homework. These guilty pleasures are fairly normal activities. For women, things that we enjoy doing are labeled “indulgence,” and we chastise ourselves for being “bad” if we do them. Indulgence sounds dirty, but most of our “guilty pleasure indulgences” are simply acts self-care. Self-care is not bad. Self-care is not selfish. Our lives do not have to follow the script of obedience.
— Brenna McCaffrey, On The Radical Act Of Self-Care, Feminspire.com (via feminspire)
