For Black Women When Self-Care is No Longer an Option

How many of us have taken this same posture either because we feel stressed, or because we're performing grounding techniques because we do?

This week, two different Black women in my immediate circles passed away. Both of these women were relatively young women who seemingly deserved a lot more from life. My prayers for their respective families and light for their journeys. Between their loss, and my own experiences of 2024, I've been more thoughtful about how more radical I need to be in resisting things that come in opposition to my very existence, and I want you to do the same.

Weathering and Black Women

Did you know that Black folks in general, and Black women specifically, have been said to suffer from weathering? Weathering is said to be the accumulation of negative stress (like that resulting from microagressions and socioeconomic disparaties) over time that can lead to dangerous physical outcomes like pre-term birth, breast cancer, diabetes, heart conditions and quickened genetic aging. The long-lasting and recurring stress by Black women must therefore be a chief concern among those of us that care about community wholeness and wellbeing.

"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." - Audre Lorde

Lessons from Lorde for Black Women

Many of us have read (and I know I say it a lot) Audre Lorde's take on self-care quoted above. But I want us to really think about our wellness (and the strategies for ensuring it) in a radically strategic way. If we want to survive the sociopolitical attacks we already experience, we must be intentional.

I hope that you are like me. I 'm far too petty and owe way too much to my lineage to go easily into that good night. Instead, I choose to invoke Harriet, and Nanny, and Marinette, and Nzingah, and Asantewaa and fight all that has been sent to destroy me (and you).

When things are radical, they are by definition fundamentally changed for a particular purpose. In this way, self-care designed to preserve our abilities to resist the growing onslaughts facing our people is indeed radical. This new conception sees as our responsibility preserving the 92% so that the world and the abundance it holds for us remain intact.

We will no longer exist in a strictly 24/7 cycle of trauma. We will resist.

This blog will seek to be a tool that may lead more of us to that kind of change. Join me?

Only good things,

Tip