Safety pins are not enough—not even the giant safety pins I managed to dig out of my possessions this past week. For anyone working on social justice issues, the world has just become a much less safe, less just, less sane place. Even less so for anyone who is not a white, so-called Christian, “able-bodied,” “straight,” born in America male. Again, the wearing of silly safety pins is simply not enough. And wallowing in grief and sadness and depression is not going to help. Righteous indignation leading to considered action is what is needed.
That, and the appropriate attention to self-care. Not the banal bath-taking-day-at-the-spa sort of self-care, but the authentic self-care of trauma stewardship as taught by the amazing Seattle-area social worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. Her book and resource guide, Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009), is a permanent and oft-used part of my own resource library. I use it in my teaching. I dip back into its underlined, dog eared, sticky-noted treasure trove whenever I’m feeling the too-familiar crispy edges of professional burnout. Like now.
I highly recommend watching (and re-watching and sharing) her inspiring Tedex talk, “Beyond the Cliff,” from April 23, 2015. In it, she reminds us that in the midst of chaos, “one of the things in your ability is to bring your exquisite quality of presence to what you are doing, how you are being.” She reminds us of a whole host of inspiring people (including Thich Nhat Hanh, Malala Yousafzai, Viktor Frankl, and Maya Angelou) and the fact that “when they could not change anything external, they were able to shift everything as a result of where they put their focus.” She ends her talk by encouraging us to take care of our own part of the web, and to focus on what makes us come truly alive and go do that.
And there is the recent Washington Post (November 12, 2016) article by Karen Attiah, “Self-care tips for those who are terrified of Trump’s presidency” in which she ends with a quote by Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
JOSEPHINE ENSIGN 