A while back my former business partner and current friend Meredith and I started a company called HavenTree that sold self care subscription boxes. It was the heyday of subscription boxes and we thought it might be a funding model for the other creative projects we had planned. People were universally intrigued and supportive, until it was time to make a purchase. During Mother’s Day and Christmas business would peak as people bought care packages, but the regular monthly subscriptions we were hoping could fund us never came through in the way we hoped. Over and over again we heard people tell us that they just couldn’t justify spending that money and time on themselves. Self care was great for everybody else, but not them.
I came to see that people were unwilling to prioritize self care because they didn’t believe they were worthy of that kind of care.
This reaction was from every demographic. Men, women, non-binary, young and old, across races and religions. Suburban Orange Fitness attendees and business bros and marginalized people in poverty. They all thought is was wonderful and wanted others to benefit, but wouldn’t extend that same care to themselves.
The reasons we are taught that we are unworthy of care are specific to the intersections of identity we stand on, but whether it’s because of race or body size or class or family systems or specific personal traumas, the message is loud: You are not worthy of care and joy.
Whenever I realize there is some unconscious belief motivating my actions I’ve learned to ask: Who benefits from this? I certainly don’t as my teeth rot from neglect and my whole body is sore due to clenching from stress. The people who benefit from my belief that “self care is indulgent and I’m lazy if I’m not productive” are the people who are making money off my work. Of course they want me to believe that to be worthy of love I must be constantly working. That’s how they make the money.
Self care is hard because from the time we were small we were taught to earn love through self-denying work, so we feel can guilty and fearful of rejection whenever we stop working.
Self care is also hard because so little of it is actually in our control. I’m not in control of the quality of the air I breathe, the water I drink, or the food in our foodways. I’m not control of cities with no walkable sidewalks or green spaces. I’m not in control of a lot of the sources of stress in my life – like how I’m affected by governmental policies or the demands of making a living.
Personally, I actually find it very empowering to honestly inspect where I don’t have power. It gives me a more accurate view on where the blame lies. If I have the power to make a change, I will, but if I don’t, I can at least fight off the shame and denial that keeps me trapped. I do not need to take individual blame for systemic problems.
For me, addressing the shame I was taught around my body’s needs has taken a total re-evaluation of my values and beliefs. As I sorted through them all – and continue to – I kept asking Socrates’ filter questions: Is this true? Is this good? Is this useful?
Most of the information I inherited about bodies has turned out to be complete garbage with better science and more information. All the diet culture, all the toxic performances, all the prioritizing of ability. The fundamentalist religious beliefs that made me ashamed of any visible skin. In substance recovery spaces I’ve heard “you’re working a program or a program is working you.” So I did the same kind of moral inventory to make my program about bodies conscious and then choose the program I want to run.
What is “enough”? I have a new answer to that question and it’s very different than my old self would have answered. As you look around you, whose life looks rewarding to lead? My spouse just went through a big job change as a response to that question when he realized the answer included no one in his company. These answers have to come from you. Capitalism and the dominant culture will never support you in your development.
Self care is hard because it directly thwarts systems of oppression. It reclaims our time and effort and care away from exploiters and replenishes us to keep going in the fight for human dignity and liberation. It’s origins in the work of Black movement leaders anchored it firmly in radical efforts. We cannot take care of ourselves alone and if we believe we should we will swallow the shame they are feeding us. As Audre Lorde famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.”
Every act of self care you practice is an act of resistance against a system that strives to strip us of our humanity. It is a fight against oppressive forces that want to keep us trapped in shame and easily exploitable. Self care is armor against a system that does not care about you.