Moving From Self-Care to Community Care

Self-care is a concept as old as time, but as of late it has become a topic of contention and debate, especially on social media.

It is a fluid concept, and it can be as all-encompassing as one needs it to be, because self-care looks different from one person to the next and from one circumstance to the next.

Someone who is chronically depressed might find that self-care on a certain day isn’t crossing off various tasks from her checklist but simply getting out of bed, opening her blinds, and changing her clothes. For another, it might involve taking time off her regular duties and doing nothing. Put simply, self-care means taking designated time to care for oneself, holistically, in whatever contextual form makes sense.

Historically, care work — for the self and for others — has been solely thrust upon women. This emphasis on taking care of others begs the question: how can we care for others if we are not putting ourselves first?

Self-care as it first came into fruition in the 20th century was largely understood as movement language, and it became popularized during the civil rights movement when burn-out felt ubiquitous. The concept was especially for Black women, who have been historically marginalized by both their gender and their race and who had been taught that others’ liberation came before their own.

But in a late-capitalist world that will readily resell and repackage resistance to its own system back to us, the term “self-care” has become a misnomer — and a buzzword of sorts. Yes, care of the self is pivotal to our health and rejuvenation, but at what cost? The co-optation and commodification of self-care has largely watered down the original intent of the term. 

Self-care can be bubble baths and designated pampering time to yourself, but it often looks like doing the unpacking, the unglamorous work — which in the moment may seem regressive, difficult, and very non-linear.

As Audre Lorde famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” In this instance, self-care is not an act of frivolity but one of resistance, and it extends and contributes to the preservation of people and movements. The Western myth of the rugged individual implicitly teaches us that it is every woman for herself. While we are all unique individuals with separate inclinations, goals, and desires, we exist as a part of a whole — and our collective liberation is inextricably tied to each other’s freedom.

When it comes to community, the Qur’an teaches us that all Muslims are like one body. If one part is hurt, the rest of the body struggles to function. I believe in straddling the line between self-care and community care, because an individual can care for herself and understand that she is also pouring care into the entire community.

The same late-capitalist world that has commodified the language of self-care encourages us to isolate ourselves, to retreat from each other. What if, instead, we took care of ourselves in order to seek camaraderie and companionship with others? 

In her book How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell writes about an idea called bioregionalism, which is not only knowing the humans around you but also taking time to learn about the diversity in non-human ecosystems. Creating authentic community doesn’t have to be complicated, and it often begins with giving those you share space with — human and non-human alike — your undivided attention. 

Odell says, “To capitalist logic, which thrives on myopia and dissatisfaction, there might be indeed something dangerous about something as pedestrian as doing nothing: escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here.” Instead of escaping into comfortable silos or trying to understand ourselves in isolation, we should opt into community care. 

For the most marginalized, self-care is woven into the fabric of healing. We are ultimately responsible for our own traumas and the way that we exist around others, but our liberation is bound up in the collective, the communal. The only way to move past language that prioritizes the self is to fully reckon with the task of dealing with ourselves so that we can actively grow and show up for each other in community care.