Self-Love

Time for Nourishment and Growth

LaShauna Austria
July 15, 2024

There are so many ways to take care of ourselves, to feed our souls. Self-care is an individualized experience, and it is okay for each of us to have different perspectives for what and who brings us to life. Food, fellowship, culture, activities, nature, music, family, community, friends, relationships; there are endless ways to feel taken care of.

The Radical Self-Care movement has become a badge of honor, an in-your-face type of resistance to a culture of busyness. Should taking care of ourselves really be radical? As an adjective, the word radical is typically synonymous with something extreme. However, there is another lens through which to view radical as an adjective: of, relating to, or proceeding from a root; such as growing from the base of a stem, from a rootlike stem, or from a stem that does not rise above the ground (radical leaves).

Let’s be Radical Leaves in this work. Let’s grow our rootlike stems so we are well and ready to engage with our communities in meaningful and needed ways. Self-care is the radical root that enables us to keep holding space for hard conversations.

Nature

The Fourth Pillar of Health: Nature Time

“I grew up feeling that connection to nature and not necessarily feeling as connected to my community as I should have been,” she tells me. She experienced racism and bullying on the playground and at school. “I found when I spent time at the park or when our family would go camping in Bruce Peninsula National Park . . . I felt so comfortable. I didn’t feel like anyone was going to come and yell something at me or exclude me.”

The Okra Project

Black Trans Led Mutual Aid.

At The Okra Project, we believe that mutual aid is essential to supporting Black Trans people across the United States. Without social safety nets, mutual aid becomes critical for many in our community, and we are proud to be a part of this vital work.

Why Okra?

The okra plant has a rich history in the African diaspora, with our ancestors bringing it with them during the Middle Passage to sustain themselves and plant in the new world.

Today, okra is often associated with health, prosperity, and community in Black cooking traditions. As such, The Okra Project represents the nourishment and sustenance that we seek to provide to Black Trans people through our mutual aid efforts.

Self-Care as a Radical Act of Self-Love | Evolve In Nature

“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” ~audre lorde

How to think about rest as a form of resistance

For NPR's Life Kit, Shereen Marisol Meraji speaks with Trisha Hersey, author of "Rest Is Resistance," about fighting against the feeling that our productivity equates to our worth.

Nurture

Self Care to Communities of Care (15 minute watch)

Self-Care as Community Care

Next up on the pyramid are the ways in which we meet our needs as social creatures. Receiving help, support, love, gifts, and physical touch in the context of our relationships are all a part of this level. In addition, giving help, support, love, gifts, and physical touch in the context of our relationships and community is also part of this level.

As social creatures who crave connection, we can practice self-care simply by plugging into our communities. On a most basic level, that might look like investing in relationships with friends and family.

The Healing Power in Owning Our Privileges — Rest For Resistance

Whether you have a little privilege or a lot, it’s easy to feel helpless when considering the scope of systemic oppression. Growth is always possible, so once we accept the need to change, the only question is how.

Self-Care for Relationships: How to Build Healthy Relationships with Yourself and Others

In the hustle and bustle of our busy lives, it’s easy to neglect one crucial aspect: our relationships. While we often prioritize external connections with friends, family, and romantic partners, it’s equally important to cultivate a healthy relationship with ourselves.

Recommended Reading

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace –– feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit.

In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us.

We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how we have the power to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires.

Being Black in a society developed by white men to benefit white men means constantly pushing back against systems that were not constructed for your flourishing. White privilege. White cultural norms. White beauty standards. White noise. You’re made to feel that your life doesn’t matter, your opinions aren’t valid, and your entire existence is too loud. It can feel like the whole world is telling you to shut up.

To these forces, Ally Henny is here to say, “No. I am a loud Black woman, and I won’t shut up.” Ally knows what it’s like to navigate racism and racialized sexism, having spent most of her life in predominantly white spaces. She’s not taking it anymore, and she’s calling you to join her in resisting racism by speaking the truth–no matter the cost. In this compelling book, Ally tells her own story of finding her voice, pushing back against oppression, and embracing her unique perspective as a loud Black woman. And she invites you to find your voice in a world that tries to silence you.

"In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist."

Angela Davis

Seeds of Change Consulting

Our firm is comprised of sector experts and rising stars — a diverse community of professionals with shared values and a deep commitment to social and economic justice.