The Power of Self-Care: Black Women Deserve Rest and Rejuvenation
Black Women Deserve Rest. Let's read about it.
The term “self-care” has become popularized to the point where it’s not even helpful to most women. Sometimes the term just washes over me, never really permeating my mind or impacting my actions. Of course, I often lean on the words of Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” But in the midst of motherhood and the daily grind, allowing myself to rest and practice self-care is often the last thing on my mind.
In a world where self-care has been commercialized, we have to decide what it means to us on an individual level. For me, self-care might look like sitting when I notice my body is tired, taking deep breaths when I notice tension in my chest, drinking water, taking a walk, and keeping up with my routines that make me feel like myself, whether that’s exfoliating my face or washing my hair. I try to squeeze in meditation moments, or a quick stretch on my yoga mat, tell myself to close my laptop after 6pm, and try to go to bed earlier, even though parenting fomo makes me want to get one last thing done now that the kids are asleep. Reading for pleasure is a big act of self-care for me, since I rarely get much quiet time to read as a mom of two.
For me, self-care comes down to an appreciation of your body and all of the work that we ask it to do daily, especially in a capitalistic society where it’s so easy to equate your work to your worth.
Most Black women I know are working twice as hard, still haunted by the old adage that we have to be twice as good. With that pressure comes lots of stress and expectations that take a toll on our minds and bodies. It’s time for us as Black women to embrace rest as a movement.
Black Rest Reading List
Check out my Bookshop.org list of Black rest books. Have you read any of these? What would you recommend?
