Tip 1: Find Your Circle.
Audre Lorde teaches us that without community, there is no liberation. Each of us carries so much through this world. Finding a community and support system that affirms your identity is essential to self-care.
Tip 2: Rest as Resistance.
We’ve been conditioned to think we must earn rest, but rest is our divine right. Consciously choosing to rest and recharge, however that may look for you, is a direct defiance of the anti-Black systems around us demanding our endless labor.
Tip 3: Speak Your Truth, Unfiltered.
A necessary part of caring for yourself is committing to articulating your feelings, experiences, and truths, even when it's difficult or makes others uncomfortable.
Tip 4: Embrace Your Anger.
Use your anger, don’t let it use you. Lorde didn’t see anger as a weakness, but rather as a source of energy for change. She wrote that our fear of anger teaches us nothing. We must use and wield it as the tool and change agent it can be.
Tip 5: Celebrate Joy.
Joy isn’t a sometimes thing; it's our birthright. Joy, love, and pleasure aren’t distractions from our liberation struggle but essential components of it. One cannot exist without the other. What’s something, big or small, that you can stop and celebrate right now?