Self-Care And Community
As working-class people we wake up every morning to the rush of a working life. We are tight up to a business profit driven schedule that administrates our lives. We have no other choice than to get up, get ready, pack food, and attend our working hours yearning for a pay check which equals paying bills, food, and other commodities sold in a capitalist system. This type of conditioning has affected our bodies, mental health, well-being for more than 500 years. How can then we practice “self-care” when our own “self” has been dehumanized by a system without our choice?
I recently began redefining my own self-care, which I want to call community care. I definitely do not want to buy into the idea of self-care produced by a capitalist system. Making people think of care as an idea to distant ourselves from everyone else. I ask how can care be inclusive? I began reading articles from feminists writers such as Audrey Lorde, bell hooks, and Angela Davis, and comrades who define self-care using a community accountability approach. Meaning if we are living in a violent system we have a duty to begin creating our own alternatives that lead into communal care. Such as if we care for ourselves, our loved ones, we will be healthy in community. As individuals we have to put ourselves in a community and also be accountable for our well-being to be well with others. We can begin by educating ourselves about what transnational corporations are doing to our food on a local and international level and begin boycotting their products, such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Starbucks.
We can begin by growing our own food, using the outdoors for recreational activities, eating healthy and living simply.
