Is the focus on self care driving us away from community care? Or not? B. Loewe’s article, which calls for the end of self care as a means towards collective change, gives us all something to think about.
I’m going to say it. I want to see an end to “self-care.” Can we put a nail in self-care’s coffin and instead birth a newer discussion of community care?
As I most often hear it, self-care stands as an importation of middle-class values of leisure that’s blind to the dynamics of working class (or even family) life, inherently rejects collective responsibility for each other’s well-being, misses power dynamics in our lives, and attempts to serve as a replacement for a politics and practice of desire that could actually ignite our hearts with a fuel to work endlessly.
Talking about how we sustain ourselves, honor our personal needs, and prioritize our well-being in this brusque and brutal world is a huge advance from movement culture generations before.
Sacred Social Justice | Activist Self Care & Community
What’s the Point of the Revolution if We Can’t Dance
Original article written by B. Loewe, posted on Organizing Upgrade October 15, 2012.
[…] by an article we recently included in transform., “An End to Self Care” by B. Loewe, I started searching for resources on self-care. I found a ton of sites, articles, and tactics for […]