Please be so kind, Fiorella, and share when you feel the master list of California's CRM trainers will be completed as this is the guiding topic of our next meeting. (nonprofitquarterly.org)

“OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS SERIES #6” BY AMIR KHADAR/WWW.AMIRKHADAR.COM

To read more of Shelly Tygielski's article, please click here.

In recent years, a growing uneasiness and an undercurrent of anxiety have emerged in the United States. Psychologists, therapists, social workers, and doctors across the medical spectrum agree that we are in the middle of a genuine national mental health crisis. A time like this can serve as an impetus for reclaiming self-care as a movement, which could have a profound and lasting impact on this country and the world. As the late beloved activist and writer Audre Lorde said, self-care is not “self-indulgent” but rather an act of “self-preservation.”¹

Self-care reaches beyond the individual. In Sanskrit, the term for self-actualization and individuation is samadhi, which means enlightenment or union with the divine. This word recognizes that we are more than just our individual selves: we are a sum of all the parts that surround us. Every life is of value, and we are all connected; when we recognize this, we can embark on the healing work that addresses the traumas of our culture.

Self-Care as a Movement

As a movement, self-care has a rich and radical history. It was born at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the civil rights era—a time when courageous individuals and communities fighting relentless prejudice and discrimination created the first formalized communities of care, which allowed them to stand strong together in the face of seemingly impossible challenges and unspeakable treatment. In fact, a core piece of what civil rights activists were and continue to be fighting for can be seen as the basic human right to self-care—for when the government turns its back on its people, self-care literally becomes a matter of life and death. Often denied medical treatment at hospitals and healthcare centers in the past, and facing any number of dangers stemming from unequal and unjust treatment in the present, part of what people of color are fighting for is the freedom, time, money, and resources to care for themselves. In this exhausting battle, often the only support they find is with one another and within themselves. Thus, civil rights leaders made healthcare a priority. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.”