Agretta Whitaker Sadler

For a variety of reasons, my maternal grandmother makes think about theories of self-care, community care, and care within scholarship, and how to deepen my commitments to these both personally and professionally. 

Audre Lorde is often quoted as being an early proponent of self care. She writes, "caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare" (1988, p. 131). While the self-care movement has been co-opted and commodified —as have other Black feminist concepts (see: intersectionality and #MeToo)— Lorde’s description of self-care was much more radical than bath bombs and sheet masks. Audre Lorde wrote these words in A Burst of Light, a book where she discusses the realities of living with cancer (first breast, then liver). Her words about caring for herself were quite literal; she was learning how to not spread herself too thin, how to deeply and intentionally tend to her physical body, and how to rejuvenate herself by resting. Self-care was an urgent matter of survival, and surviving as a radical Black Lesbian writer in a world that is hostile toward each of those identities —individually and intersectionally— was an act of political warfare. "For Lorde, self-care wasn’t buying a candle, a new herbal tea, or any other form of consumerism, self-care was both the sustenance that sustained her ability to enact change and was in itself a radical act" (Porteous-Sebouhian, 2021, para. 1). 

I think about Audre Lorde’s words and life in relation to my position in the academy. For all intents and purposes, I was never supposed to have access to this space. My knowledge was never intended to be included or valued here, and my presence, in and of itself, has been disruptive at times. Learning not to overextend myself, to prioritize rest, to make sure that I’m not having meetings in place of meals, to take my Monday night contemporary dance class no matter what I have due, among other practices in self-care are all vital to making sure I can sustainably do the work that I hope to continue to do.

In addition to caring for ourselves, community care is equally —if not more, necessary for our survival. While Western individualism and our hyper-consumerist economy emphasize a focus on the self and independently providing and caring for oneself, we are completely interdependent on one another as human beings. A feminist ethic of care, as theorized by Carol Gilligan (1982), “starts from the premise that as humans we are inherently relational, responsive beings and the human condition is one of connectedness or interdependence.” While her ideas about the moral development of women were controversial, Gilligan’s theorization of an ethic of care highlights the inherent value and necessity of community, asking us to consider how we might continuously aim to meet the needs of those around us to ensure the survival of the collective.