The Radical Act of Reclaiming Self-Care

First, I think we need to break down what self-care really means.

With roots in the medical world, self-care is a term used to describe activities and behaviors that promote well-being. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines self-care as “the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider”.

Sounds like something we should all be doing, right? Definitely yes. Self-care seems like something that we should all have resources and equal access to. But as we know – this isn’t the case.

Now, let’s talk about what self-care really looks like.

Judging by my Instagram feed I would say self-care is bubble baths, face masks, fancy yoga clothes, and aromatherapy. There are certain products, apps, and practices that make self-care easy. One can also gather that being a thin white woman is required to truly enjoy self-care.

Thanks to the collaborations between influencers, marketers, and companies – the self-care industry is estimated to be worth around $450 billion and growing. What I see is that something we are all in desperate need of has become less and less attainable.

I need to stress here that I strongly believe in the value of self-care. But I feel we need to reclaim what it looks like.

Here is what self-care means to me: it’s something that changes depending on what I need. My self-care does not look the same as it does for other folks. Furthermore, the self-care that worked for me last year might not work today. In fact, the only wrong way to practice self-care is to practice someone else’s self-care and berate yourself when it doesn’t work.

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Alex Free (they/she) is a fierce mental health & social justice advocate who focuses on topics spanning intersectionality, reproductive health, disrupting rape culture, healing & trauma, identity, and dismantling white supremacy. They are a creator, storyteller, speaker, survivor leader, and yogi as well as an intersectional, trauma-informed facilitator of social justice and healing spaces. Alex speaks about their own journey as someone who lives with AuDHD, CPTSD, chronic pain, and other chronic illnesses and believes there is power in our stories. They are also a queer, non-binary femme who was displaced through trans-racial and trans-national adoption. Their hope is that each of us goes on the journey to decolonize our minds and our spaces so we can truly fight for collective liberation for all of us.