The love we’re invested in is community care!

by Maggie Block

When talking about what we wanted our newsletter to focus on this month, love was the natural feature; and while romantic love is wonderful, what we really want to focus on in these times is community care. To harp on my message from last month’s newsletter, it’s up to us to care for and protect each other.

It’s important to remember that before anyone can participate in community care, they need to first being sure they have an active self care practice. While I am of the ilk that will run themselves ragged putting everyone and everything before myself, my therapist assures me that one cannot fill from an empty cup.

Often times we start to incorporate self care in response to stress, but if we can make self care a proactive part of our lives it allows us to stay ready, so we don’t have to get ready. An exercise I have done with young people in the past; that I invite you to try, if you like me never care for yourself; is you divide a piece of paper into three sections, one you label physical, one you label emotional, and one you label spiritual. In each section write about what you do to take care of that part of yourself. Then think about which part of yourself you would like to take more care of, and create a goal around the care you want to give yourself. You may want to think about why it is challenging to take care of yourself, see if you can create scaffolding in your goal to help you overcome that challenge.

If your friend group is like mine, y’all are so busy that getting together is a challenge, doing community organizing or building seems darn near impossible. So may I suggest doing the above self care activity with them, maybe try and come up with goals together that support each other and collectivize some of the labor that makes life too hectic.

We’re better, and so much more capable together.