By Carmen R. H. Chandler

By now, we know that self-care is not selfish. The next step is to acknowledge that it’s not just for us.

You are enough. Your health, wellness, and sanity are thorough reasons for taking excellent care of yourself. You must know this. We must know this. Even with families, companies, communities – hell, countries – depending on us to always come to the rescue, Black women must resist being absorbed by our various roles and relationships. Audre Lorde said “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I’d be crunched into other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive.” At this point, we are fighting to define ourselves. Furthermore, we are learning and crafting the tools necessary to examine ourselves – to see our own wounds, and heal them; to recognize our own worth, and honor it. This is the very basis of self-care.

So this affirmation is vital: You are enough.

Still, you are not all.

None of us lives in a vacuum. We are all connected, and those connections are real. Although it is easy to feel isolated in an increasingly electronic and fantasy-based world, the village philosophy of our ancestors still speaks truth. Each of us is whole and self-sufficient, but together, we are a community. And community is everything.
This inherent knowledge compels us to think beyond the self. Black women have been the engine of every major movement for social change that America has ever experienced. There is a reason for that. As we push back against the self-destructive aspects of the “Strong Black Woman” stereotype, let us also resist the temptation to relinquish our ties to the larger vision. Our desire, our need, and our responsibility to take care of one another is just as valid as the task of taking care of ourselves. Community care, too, is vital to our wellness, growth, and forward movement.

Luckily, self-care and community care don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Uplifting the group doesn’t mean we have to put it on our backs. In many ways, our dedicated inner work creates an energy that expands outward, automatically augmenting one’s contribution to our collective rising. Here are four ways that committing to a regular self-care practice can benefit your activism, social justice, and community work.

Counter Compassion Fatigue and Decrease Apathy
We know that self-care can help us prevent and heal from burnout. Likewise, it can undo the effects of compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is defined by the Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project as “an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper." Among other things, this can lead to apathy. As a natural reaction to overwhelm, our empathy response can shut down, causing us to forego concern about important issues in the interest of self-preservation. With regular self-care, we can nip this impulse in the bud, and reengage with our communities in impactful, whole-hearted ways.

Heal Intergenerational Trauma
Much of our self, family, and community healing work has to do with situations that occurred long before we were born. In her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Dr. Joy Degruy outlines the logic around the condition, which is unique to the descendants of Africans enslaved during the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. “Although slavery has long been a part of human history, American chattel slavery represents a case of human trauma incomparable in scope, duration and consequence to any other incidence of human enslavement,” says Degruy. She asserts that not only do we carry the marks of the systematic oppression we experience in our lifetimes, many of us also bear signs of trauma that has been compounded as it was passed down through the generations.

Quality self-care can assist us in overturning this trauma. Talk and group therapy, and even alternative options such as Reiki or chakra balancing, can help us sort through all that we’re holding. They can also give us the tools to speak with our living lineage about what has occurred, and thereby help them to heal, as well. Finally, your personal journey to release familial/cultural trauma can inform your perspective on broader work. After looking squarely at your own scars and addressing them, it is much easier to recognize similar trauma-induced behavioral and social patterns in others. This perceptive ability, and the will to address issues respectfully and empathically, will almost certainly be a boon to your organizing efforts.
Boosts Your Immune System and Energy Levels
Self-care leaves you feeling refreshed, but that “new me, who ‘dis” feeling does more than just add points to your personal glow up scale. It also has a beneficial effect on your immune system, meaning that your body will be able to stave off illness better. Taking planned breaks for scheduled “me time” decreases the likelihood of unforeseen illness taking you out of the game.

With a regular self-care routine, you’re likely to feel more energized as well, meaning you’ll be able to put more effective effort into your chosen form of activism. You’ll be physically fortified and ready to truly show up for what you care about.

Transforms Relationships
Good self-care can help regulate the symptoms of chronic stress and anxiety. Generally, lifting these burdens can make you a more pleasant person to interact with and increase your social and leadership skills. Many people who practice quality holistic development also experience some level of personal transformation. It’s not uncommon for them to start to see that transformation reflected in their relationships soon thereafter. This is of utmost importance, as relationships are the building blocks of community. If each one of us brings more love, authenticity and communication to our individual relationships, it will take much less effort to form a working unified front against oppressive systems.

It’s perhaps the most tangible intangible benefit of self-care: as we heal ourselves, we heal others as well. The people in your environment will begin to reflect the work you’ve done for you… or, they’ll find a different space to inhabit. Either way, your self-care work creates in your life the microcosm of a more healed community. It’s a way to be the change you hope to see… and then see it.

While it’s common to view our time as being spent on either one thing or another, true self-care exists in a both/and space, the likes of which Black women know intimately. Giving deep attention to your care, growth, and joy takes nothing away from our communities. It adds to them. When you function better, you open the way for the people who engage with you to do the same.
Then we rise together - whole.

How does your self-care practice benefit your larger work?

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Carmen R. H. Chandler is a writer, wellness practitioner, dancer, and educator. As the creator of The Body Temple, she blends these gifts to provide innovative, culturally relevant health solutions for the Black DAEUS (Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States) community. In all of her work, Carmen is committed to envisioning a new age of Black wholeness, freedom, joy, and justice.

1. Remove the push notifications from your phone. 
2. Do you use phone after 10pm. 
3. Remove your phone from your bedroom and place in another room at night. 
4. Do not use your phone while eating. 
5. Use the internet only for work purpose. (Open only one browser for the enter day) 
6. Over the weekend: Do not use your phone until 12noon 
7. Try to go 24 hours without using your phone or internet. Work on a project, business idea, volunteer, etc.

Nichola K. Brown, LICSW is a therapist as well as a life and wellness coach. She is author of the book, “Sabbath Season: A Call to Rest” Founder of RESET a Digital Detox Coaching Group: http://eepurl.com/bMseCP

by Veronica Agard

The Black experience in the United States has always been paradoxical in nature, as our historical memory knows that it has been one of constant struggle. However, in the face of the violence, poverty, trauma, systemic oppression and death, we have continued to thrive.

But after rolling to protests, having emotionally charged conversations with White “allies,” and witnessing how many folks on my newsfeed were more concerned about Cecil the Lion than Sandra Bland, I’ve been reminded that be Black in America is to be tired. As it’s been said time and time again, being Black in America is exhausting – we’re supposed to just play sports, make White America laugh or sing along to (apolitical) music, and stay silent while the heteropatriarchal White supremacist system kills us. All to diminish our spirit and potential.



Society currently presents the intersection of thriving and surviving as a challenge; an impossible aspiration that seems less and less obtainable when bombarded by the mainstream news cycle. Systematic hurdles and barriers exist at every turn and dictate how we should be living our lives and imply that we should not aspire for more. As the medical data confirms that Black folks and other people of color suffer from generational trauma in the forms of high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and other preventable illnesses, we are forced to buy back into a medical system that has historically harmed us. The capitalist structure is not truly designed for wellness, in fact, it invested in perpetuating illness as a means of profit.

While there is hope in holistic medicine and campaigns encouraging us to get physically healthy, such as Black Girls Run! and FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move!, we cannot afford to solely focus on the body. We have to place an emphasis on the spirit and what (collective) joy looks like for us as individuals and as a people. In this (new) movement for Black liberation, there has to be an emphasis on celebrating and cultivation Black joy as well. Black liberation has a long history – from the liberation theology born in the Civil Rights Movement, to the radical teachings of Assata Shakur and the Black Liberation Army – and proves to be more relevant than ever in our movements. Whether you seek liberation in the church or through direct action, can we truly liberate ourselves as a people if we do not acknowledge and emphasize the role of sustaining ourselves in mind, body and spirit?

If we are going to have Black liberation, we must continue to strive for wholeness and wellness in the face of all the ills of the world. For me, Black joy is both the collective experiences and the personal triumphs of our people. Black joy looks different for everyone and can be found in a variety of forms; in simple acts of self-care, spending time with loved ones, or indulging yourself by working on those projects you’ve been putting off. Starting a journal, getting to know your creative side through a form of art, developing a circle of sisters, or taking yourself out on the town. Even if it’s just five minutes, making the time to sit down to (re)discover what brings you happiness is a liberatory act.

by Quanisha Smith 

Everyday Black women face countless acts of violence against our personhood. Many of you may read the first statement as a gross exaggeration, but consider this: We are told by popular media and culture that our skin color, body shape, hair texture and a plethora of other physical and behavioral attributes associated with our race and culture are undesirable, unworthy, and inferior. This is the reason for our call to action to simply matter.

As individuals hold multiple markers of identity besides their race and gender, these experiences become compounded as we encounter others’ attitudes regarding gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class and so forth. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we internalize these viewpoints. How do we guard ourselves from these constant assaults against our womanhood?
Over the past few years, I have personally and professionally coached Black women through the process of staying true and authentic while dealing with the real weight of life experiences rooted in oppression and privilege. As a woman who has battled with mental illness since my teens, in the past five years, I have become overly protective of my emotional wellness. I’ve taken my fight for self-healing and mental health to new levels through academic and professional trainings. What I learned, and know for sure, is that life circumstances do not have to dictate how I feel, believe, or think about myself. Also, circumstances do not have to determine how I will act nor how I will lead my life.


Once I learned to break these harmful chains of internal oppression, rooted in a self-perception that “things keep happening to me” and shifted my paradigm to know “I create my reality,” the ability to handle micro-aggressions, stereotypes, and societal malfunctions/disappointments became much easier. I began to work towards my self-actualization.

Notable feminist, bell hooks in her self-recovery book, Sisters of the Yam, urges Black women to see self-actualization as part of our political efforts to resist White supremacy and sexist oppression. Audre Lorde calls for Black women to place our struggles to self-actualization at the center of our daily life. She exclaims, “And it is empowerment — our strengthening in the service of ourselves and each other and future — that will be the result of the pursuit.” The pursuit is the quest for Black women to reclaim each other and ourselves. hooks expands on Lorde’s assertion as she explains the power of choice in the larger sociopolitical system,

“Choosing ‘wellness’ is an act of political resistance. Before Black women can effectively sustain engagement in organized resistance struggle, in the Black liberation movement, we need to undergo a process of self-recovery that can heal individual wounds that may prevent us from functioning fully.”

Black female self-recovery is an expression of liberatory political practice because we were never meant to be well and to reach our own self-actualization.

Through the strategies I share below, you can release internalized views of inferiority and break patterns of negative thinking, which often lead to depression and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Let’s create a new reality rooted in happiness, strength and self-love.

1. Remember Who You Be

You are fierce! You make a way out of no way and you win! You may have been the first in your family to graduate from college. You are a leader in your community. You are a take-charge woman who is brilliant and bold. When circumstances or people cause you to doubt yourself, recall who you are and draw on that fortitude to keep going.

Take Action: It’s easy to get lost in self-criticism. Let’s focus on how great you are. List 3-5 moments in your life where you felt good about yourself. This could be a major accomplishment (i.e. winning a grant) or a positive experience that simply made you feel good (i.e visiting the beach, etc.)

2. Declare Your Needs

Make a list of what you need out of life. It’s okay to need certain things out of life. These are your desires. Think about your values, how do you need them to show up in your life? (ex. I need to surround myself with people who want to uplift their communities; I need a partner who values my work and passions, etc.)

Take Action: Learn how to discover your values. Follow the three-step process outlined here: Who You Be? How Black Women Can Live Authentically

3. Identify Limiting Beliefs

As a woman thinketh, so she is. We can create our desired life through setting clear intentions and taking conscious actions toward them. After you get clear your desires, you have to make sure your beliefs align with them. Beliefs are simply a framework of thoughts that form our worldview. It’s important that we tend to our thoughts because we attract what we think about most. Essentially, we create our reality through our thinking. Also, our thinking impacts our emotional expressions.

Take Action: Name your doubts. As you completed the above activities, what thoughts came to mind? Did you have any doubts or beliefs that arose as to why you couldn’t have those desires? Write them down. Challenge yourself to reframe these worldviews. Ask yourself: Is this always true? Is there another way to look at this situation? What if this thought is wrong, what then?
4. Release

Once you have gotten in the place to a place of clarity through the above steps, then you must learn to let go. If we continue to focus on what’s lacking in our lives, then we will continue to focus on scarcity and fear. Constantly living in tate of low vibrations will only bring in more of the same unwanted circumstances.

Take Action: Envision your new reality and live. Do things that make you happy. Reach your highest self. Contribute to your wellbeing and that of your community.

Ultimately, trust that all will work out for your highest good and the highest good of all concerned.

Leave a comment: How will you be well today?

Photo: Shutterstock

Quanisha Smith is the founder and Chief Activator of Black Women Rise Movement. She explores issues centered on Black women, leadership, and social change. Visit Black Women Rise & Grab the FREE Guide: 12 Effective Leadership Resources for Black Women.

by Makeda Vaughn


It’s mid-January and everyone who made promises to stay healthy and fit for the New Year is holding on for dear life to keep up with those commitments. If you’re like me, you’re juggling multiple activities along with a full time job, and realizing just how much hard work it takes to stay consistent.

There are just a few days left in 2014, so many of us have already turned our sights on the New Year. While many people criticize New Year’s Resolutions, it is natural to reflect upon the previous year and to have general hopes or goals for the year ahead. And so often, Black women are discouraged from focusing on their own dreams and wellbeing. Thus, we’ve created a list of “resolutions” that every Black woman should think about adopting this year, as a way of affirming our self-worth.