Community Care vs. Self Care
I hope your entry into this new year has felt soft, smooth, or some other word that feels good for you.
F and I arrived in Mexico in December and were so warmly welcomed. My Spanish teacher generously loaned us bikes, and a friend lent us their car for the entirety of our stay. We spent our holidays with our friends’ families, and whenever we thanked them for being so generous, we’ve been met with a very casual “of course!” or “nahhhh.”
I tried to share this revelation of non-transactional exchanges with my friend and one of the TNI Community Meditation Teachers, Coral Short, and they explained it as mutual aid.
For the curious, like me, Global Living defines mutual aid as “cooperating to serve community members. Creating networks of care and generosity to meet the immediate needs of our neighbours. And addressing the root causes of challenges we face and demanding transformative change.”
In an interview with Mashable, Nakita Valerio, a Toronto-based community organizer and researcher who specializes in building cross-cultural bridges, defined community care as “People committed to leveraging their privilege to be there for one another in various ways,” which reminded me of something I spoke about in my Sangha Live course: unlike self-care, community care does not place the onus of compassion on a single individual.
With all of this in mind, I’ve gone ahead and gathered a few resources and prompts around the themes of mutual aid and community care. You’ll find them below, right after some updates on what I’m up to and how you can engage with my work these days.
Resources
Read.
Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-centered guide to escape the diet trap, heal your self-image, and achieve body liberation by Dalia Kinsey
This can be a really tough time of year. Between short days, cold weather, and the ongoing influx of diet-culture fuelled rhetoric and shame-based marketing tactics that inevitably follow the new year, leading straight into Black History Month … well … it can be a LOT. I have had this book recommended to me from several highly trusted sources. Let me know if you dive in and how it lands.
Try.
Nervous System Mastery: A PDF Guide to Breathing Practices by Kyle Kowalski of Sloww Sunday
Breath work is such a powerful tool for managing anxiety and calming the nervous system. It has been a huge source of support for me in difficult times. Or even sometimes in exciting times to keep me level. I like that this PDF is easy to access and offers a few options to choose from.
Learn.
Where do I Belong? An Exploration of Identity and Belonging for bicultural and multicultural bodies.
By the time this newsletter goes out, registration for this will already be closed, but it’s such a beautiful offering, I wanted to share it anyway. The course invites folx identifying as bi/multi-cultural living in North America to an online experiential course devoted to unpacking the experience of “not knowing where you full belong in conversations about race.”
Take in.
“It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Reflect.
Draw your community—it could be a shape, a colour, a set of shapes and colours. Are there different ones? Do they overlap? Are they chosen? Assigned? How do your chosen communities feel different than the ones you are assigned? How do you interact with them differently? What are the best and worst parts of each?
Meditate.
The news cycle is constant and rarely offers us much in the way of hope or even solutions. It can be helpful to have the tools for resourcing within as we navigate the varying degrees and types of suffering going on around the world at any given time. This meditation is meant to support you in sidestepping compassion overwhelm.
Link appreciation: Dalia Kinsey, Recomendo, SlowwSunday.
