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<p>The articles began to pop up almost immediately after Nov. 8, speaking to readers in a tone of grave concern, like a dear friend comforting you after a breakup or the death of a loved one. “ More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement, a push to redefine health care beyond just treatment of the individual body gained steam within various movements in the ’60s. Activists saw that poverty was correlated with poor health, and they argued that in order to dismantle hierarchies based upon race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, those groups must be able to live healthy lives. In turn, living healthily “required the involvement of individuals and communities in their own health promotion.” Yet while the federally funded Community Health Clinic network and other free clinics popped up around the country, Nelson observed, there still existed rampant sexism, with the female body widely perceived and treated by medical staff as “inherently sick” (if they were middle- or upper-class) or, more disparagingly, as a “vector of disease” (if poor or working-class). This, along with providers’ hostile attitudes toward reproductive rights, led women’s liberation activists to open their own clinics designed specifically for women’s needs.
The women’s lib movement, of course, took cues from the civil rights movement in many ways, and as Nelson points out, this was especially true with health care. Civil rights leaders had made health care a priority, with Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Body and Soul, which opens with the Black Community Survival Conference held in Oakland, California, in 1972—“a rally, street fair, and block party” in which speeches were given and information distributed about the party’s free community-service programs. Those programs were established both to make up for the dire lack of adequate social-service programs after the waning of the War on Poverty as well as to provide a coping mechanism against the harassment and surveillance that black people suffered at the hands of the police and the federal government. These nationwide clinics recruited nurses, doctors, and students to test for illness and disease rampant within the black community (including lead poisoning and sickle-cell anemia), as well as to provide basic preventive care. For black people and especially black women, this kind of self-care was brought to fill a desperate need. The “survival programs” of the Panthers were about just that: survival.
Both of these movements also coincided with a more niche “Wellness: Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day.” He goes on to explain, “
Holistic fitness lifestyles like the one Rather profiled marked the beginning of a new era for self-care, one that disassociated it further from politics. That shift continued in the late ’80s and the 1990s, Petrzela notes, when fitness and wellness lifestyles began to move from the fringes of society to the mainstream, becoming more commercialized and associated with the wealthy. Yoga classes suddenly appeared on YMCA schedules and in health clubs, for instance, contributing to what she described as “the lightening of the tone of many of these originally more subversive ideas”—think upper-class moms picking up their kids in Lululemon pants, or
<p>It took 9/11 for self-care to begin to reclaim its roots as an act of political resistance, according to Petrzela. The collective trauma of that experience led to a A Burst of Light: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
And in some cases, the connection between caring for oneself before you can care for others is crystal clear. Shinise Muse, a counselor and supervisor at Crisis Text Line—a not-for-profit hotline offering support to people experiencing everything from suicidal thoughts to sexual abuse—never encountered the concept of self-care until she started working at the organization two yearsago. At CTL, she told me, employees and counselors are taught that self-care is necessary to avoid burnout and
<p>Muse’s daily routine is a perfect example of something Petrzela told me. “Caring for the self and caring about society actually can be interconnected,” she said. After the past few months, more people have become aware of this fact than ever before.</p></div>”>
