Self care, Self-ish Care and Community Care
Why self-care must be tempered with a conscious effort at community care
Because reasons, I've been a fan of "Spoon Theory" for a long time.
For those of you who don't know, in the disability community, people have long used an analogy about chronic illness first put forth by blogger Christine Miserandino in 2003. It is and remains one of the best explanations of how not being chronically ill can function as a privilege.
The whole thing happened as Miserandino was attempting to explain to a friend over a meal in a diner what it was like to have lupus. She gathered a bouquet of spoons for her friend and then proceeded to explain that every thing that she did during the course of the day would cost a certain number of spoons, and that because her spoons were limited, she very frequently had to make hard choices about what she could or couldn't do, lest she run out of spoons and suffer physical consequences.
Those in the know will often talk about their ability to do things in terms of the analogy. "I don't have enough spoons for that," is a common refrain when you have a circle of friends where one or more folks have chronic illnesses or other conditions that mean they need to pay close attention to how much exertion they put forth over the course of a day. When I was in recovery from my hip replacement surgery, I was very familiar with the notion that my body was using all of its energy for healing, leaving very little resources to do much else.
I started noticing very quickly that as the pandemic unfolded, I was explaining spoon theory over and over again to my work colleagues. Our workplaces and our colleagues were grappling with the idea of how to get it all done when you only have so much energetic resources, and while this was familiar territory to us "spoonies," apparently for the rest of the world, this was something new.
The watchword now in the post pandemic 21st Century, is "Self Care." It's everywhere. And everyone is supposed to do it. A lot of the idea for self-care arose out of two aspects of the 2020 pandemic. The first is the fact that as workplaces adapted to the new reality of being on lockdown, transitioning to remote work and remote school and the unique challenges that were (and continue to be) faced by parents of young children, so many people reached mental breaking points. And employers, trying to be respsonsive to the pressure employees were facing, began offering more mental health tools and promoting the idea of "self-care."
A second place where "self-care" started finding itself at the center of the conversation came as Black people and other marginalized groups were dealing with the aftermath of George Floyd's murder and the summer of Black Lives Matter protests. Sure, anyone who had been part of opposing the Trump Administration's agenda by 2020 was familiar with the idea that self care is a necessary component of resistance to prevent burnout. But the summer of 2020 transformed self care from merely being a good idea, to being absolutely mandatory for survival. There was an incredibly deep conversation around Black people and mental health care that happened and was widely acknowledged as being a long time coming. By 2022, the idea of self care being something everyone should be doing was firmly entrenched in the psyche of Americans.
Because it's what everyone is supposed to be doing, lots of folks trying to fit in to the trend call things "self care" that really aren't. If self-care is really about doing the things that keep your body and mind healthy enough to withstand the pressures of our current circumstances, that's going to limit the universe of what actually "counts" as self-care. Thus, a spa vacation might be part of self-care, but buying a luxury automobile probably isn't. One can make an argument that drinking whiskey is self-care because it feels good, but considering how bad it can be for a person to get drunk, is it really self care or merely self-indulgence? Add into this the general fact of "different strokes for different folks," and things get even more complicated. For some people, cannabis is a necessary part of managing pain and anxiety, yet for others it is merely an opportunity to veg out and be stoned, and there's an argument to be made on both sides as to why that might or might not be self-care. What is and isn't self-care has become deeply murky and prone to misunderstanding.
Indeed there is an argument to be made that if everything can be considered self care, is anything actually self care? Has the term become so overused that it is now meaningless? Is it more of a punch line than a real tool for our lives? I think the answer to that is both yes and no. Because the need for self-care persists, and is still very fucking real. And thankfully, our social circles are more tolerant than ever of the notion that people do need to sometimes stop doing everything else for everybody else, and recuperate and build back those all important "spoons" that let us get through our days. The phrase, "I need to engage in a little self-care," is no longer met as much with eyerolls or secret judgey-ness as it once was. When Marvel's Spiderman can be the subject of a popular self-care meme, clearly the concept of self-care has made it to the mainstream.
So, yeah. We're all doing self care. And that's super important. The fact that self care may have become misunderstood or misapplied in no way undermines that self care is still necessary. We are still living in late stage capitalist landscape that features gaping inequities and rampant suffering. We are still grappling with threats to democracy from war-torn Ukraine to white supremacists at home. And just because the Biden Administration says the pandemic is over doesn't mean you can't still get COVID, or that there isn't some new virus coming down the pike that will be just as deadly. And unchecked climate change threatens our ability to live on the planet at all. We live in a moment that feels relentless in its demands of us physically and emotionally, so the need to be engaged in a program of self-care is as necessary as it has ever been. The fact that self-care is on everyone's agenda is a good thing.
But can too much self-care be a bad thing?
Recent research indicates that people who engage in certain types of meditation over time become less capable of empathy, more selfish. And while it is true that many people are "people pleasers" who put everyone ahead of themselves, and they need to be encouraged to do things to support their own well-being, when someone's focus becomes solely on individual self care, it can often get trotted out as an excuse to avoid responsibilities. Moms absolutely need self-care. And sometimes they need to prioritize self-care over caring for a child. (Put your oxygen mask on first, then your child's...) But there is a moment at which mom's need for a glass of chardonnay maybe shouldn't come before junior's need for a diaper change. (And, by the way, where is Dad in all this parenting business anyway?)
There is a point at which self-care becomes self-centeredness, and taken too far, even becomes dangerous. The man who obsessively goes to the gym every day to buff himself up, who takes steroids, is that self-care, or is that body dysmorphia? Actress and founder of the lifestyle brand Goop, Gwenneth Paltrow, recently caused a stir online when she talked about her daily maintenance routine on a celebrity doctor's podcast. The all-too-familiar litany of cliches -- drinking bone broth for lunch, eating a relentlessly sparse paleo diet, doing an hour of exercise daily, long saunas -- was criticized as being actually unhealthy. Too few calories, too much exercise, too much emphasis on restrictive diets. It's what advocates against eating disorders have been fighting for years. Are Gwenneth and Goop really about self care, or about vanity and privilege?
The truth is that when self-care (listening to and acknowledging your mind’s and your body's needs) falls over into self indulgence or self-obsession, it's detrimental. The relentlessness of Paltrow's "self-care" seems exhausting and joyless. The existence of our bodybuilder signals a lack of self-esteem and could lead to mental health issues from overuse of steroids. People who overuse things like plastic surgery, or botox, or fashion, or anything else designed to enhance appearance tend not to look as good as they wanted to.
The antidote to this excess when it happens is very simple -- community.
Have you ever noticed that when you start caring about someone else's problems, you get a break from your own? And I don't mean this in a "there but for the grace of god go I" sort of bullshit. Because the fact is this is true even when your problems are vastly more significant or problem-y than the other person's. The reason that this works is not because you can compare yourself to someone else (that's almost always going to make you miserable.) It's because getting out of your own head, and caring about someone else is almost always going to provide relief from your own stress.
We live in an age where there are so many problems, that are all so large and scary that it becomes hard to imagine how anything you as an individual could do would make any difference whatsoever. But here's the thing -- it is not up to you to solve any of our problems. If one individual or country or entity could have solved our problems as a society, they would have been solved already. But nothing we've got on our plate is that simple. So this isn't about taking on the enormity of the whole problem. It's about doing what you can with what you've got.
If you're overwhelmed, start small. Help one person with one small problem. Maybe an older neighbor is struggling with keeping up their home and needs someone to change a few light bulbs and tighten a few doorknobs or fix a cabinet or two. Maybe there's a beach trash pick up day you can partake in, or a local canned food drive you can contribute to. Find a volunteer gig that you can take on -- maybe once a month at the local animal shelter or at the local hospital. Eventually, you might find an organization or a cause that you want to really dive into and put time, money, and resources into. Or not. The point here is to do something that ISN'T about you, but about making things better for others.
Caring about others and being available to them to listen to their problems and help them is an important part of getting out of your own head and building a supportive network around you. Self care is great. But there will be moments where you can't care for yourself, because what you need is beyond your own ability to provide. Modern life and modern sensibilities have concealed from us the truth our ancestors understood implicitly -- your community is how you survive, and without it, you're done. Being banished or excluded from a community deprived you of resources, and left you vulnerable. To the elements, to bandits, to strangers, to the wilderness. In our culture which prizes "rugged individualism," we tend to think that we shouldn't need someone else to survive. But the truth is that no one does this thing called life all on their own. We all get help. As children, as young adults, as adults, at every life stage there is a parent or a teacher or a lover or a mentor or a friend who is there for us to help us ease the load.
No one does it alone. Because you can't do it all alone.
That goes for our problems a a society as well. In the end, none of our problems as a society get solved without us developing that muscle that cares for others besides ourselves, and particularly for those that we don't know and don't feel any kinship to. If we only want to make things better for ourselves and for those who are most like us, that kind of selfishness very quickly will destroy the world. Healing the world, making it a better place, it starts with our willingness to see good things happen to all of us, not just to ourselves.
So what does all this mean for the Craft?
The Craft is a tool, and as I've said before, a tool is only ever as good or as bad as the witch who wields it. I'm also a fan of what I call the Rule of 100 -- that nothing is 100 percent true for 100 percent of witches 100 percent of the time. That said, when I teach young witches what it means to live this life, to be a practitioner of the Craft, I tell them about the things that I'm living by because I've seen first hand how it all goes to shit if you don't. I am a deep advocate of self-care. But I also believe that if you're diving deep into using your Craft for self-care, but not using Craft for the broader community, you're going to find your world grows smaller and smaller, scarier, and more exhausting to manage.
What does community care look like in the Craft?
It can take a lot of different forms. The first and most obvious is caring for the community of witches around you, whether that's your coven or a group you practice and worship with, or the other solitaries around you who you see at local events and at local shops. The Craft endures because of the communities of witches that have developed and nurtured each other and the Craft over decades. It will always be important for us to carry on that effort, to preserve the Craft and see it grow for the next generations. The world needs witches. And it is up to make sure that the world has the best witches we can provide.
But if we are to really survive as a society and as a planet, we can't take a narrow view of who our community is. As witches we need to care about our neighborhoods, our state, our country, our whole world. We need to care about communities of people that are represented within our witch community -- particularly those who are marginalized and oppressed. The knowledge that we have we need to use to not just help ourselves to the good things in life, but also to help our families, both blood and chosen. But it's also to help those who don't have access to power, and who need help.
Yes, you can do spellwork to help causes you care about. Yes, you can do spellwork to help individuals who need help. Yes, you can do spellwork to improve your community. You can also do all the non-magical things to help your community too. You can volunteer your time and energy. You can donate money. And when you do those things, you're going to be shocked to discover how much they energize you, how much better you feel, and how your life improves, even if none of your problems have disappeared or changed.
Sometimes the best way to help yourself is to help somebody else. Try it and see.