As a black woman, practicing self-care hasn’t always come naturally.
I’ve had to teach myself how to do it, and how to prioritize it.
And it hasn’t been easy.
Bonnistudio / Stocksy
This mountain of responsibilities left me little time to care for my mental and emotional health.
But then I burned out.
I crashed spectacularly in May 2014, unable to even drag myself out of bed to eat.
Jen Brister / Stocksy
I never listened to my bodys needs, even when I was hungry and exhausted.
Id run myself into the ground and couldnt even appreciate the spoils of all of my labor.
The way I was living and pushing, pushing, pushing was unsustainable, and something had to give.
Kristen Curette / Stocksy
It was an intentional and serious decision to start practicing self-care.
And I’m not alone in making this conscious choiceother women are beginning to do the same.
Women have beentasked with being caregivers for centuries.
Jacki Potorke / Stocksy
Because of this, “self-care” has become the buzziest of feminist buzzwords.
Practicing self-care gives me the confidence to say “no"and mean it.
We have to think about part of our self-care process as becoming a political act, a collective act.
Self-care becomes extra important when your needs aren’t being met by the dominant culture, he tells SELF.
So what does self-care look like, exactly?
No matter who you are, it can mean many different things to different people.
Each person takes care of themselves in different ways.
Self-care is really a process,” explains Cooper-Owens.
“It needs to be ongoing; it needs to be thoughtful; it needs to be intentional.
Youre working for liberation.
Youre working for joy.
For Boylorn, self-care is about recognizing when to take a break.
I am learning to be kind to myself, Boylorn says.
I do something to rejuvenate myself and re-focus my energies.
No matter how you practice it, above all, self-care is a way to build happiness.
And for me, at least, that feels like a revolution.
Evette Dionneis a black feminist culture writer, editor, and scholar based in Brooklyn, New York.
