The world around us seems to be falling apart. Violence raging in streets and borders, deaths stacking up in newsfeeds and neighbourhoods, the very fabric of life is fraying under cruelty. In this time of despair, it is natural to feel that self-care is a hollow term. When communities are under attack, when wars and police violence, economic displacement and systemic neglect are no longer the exception, but the daily reality, the idea of taking care of yourself will sound like an  empty promise. Yet it is precisely in these moments that a more radical, and more ethically grounded understanding of self-care becomes not only necessary but revolutionary.

Whenever we think of the term “self-care”, we often think of putting on a facemask or enjoying an overly expensive coffee.

Much of the popular discourse on self-care in recent years has been reduced to commodified routines – facials, scented candles, productivity retreats, “me-time” playlists, and lifestyle aesthetics.

They are usually set up to suit perfectly to neoliberal requirements: manage your body, use your energy most efficiently, become increasingly productive, work on your personal care like it were another self-management project. Self-care in capitalism is also grasped too effortlessly as another individual task, a self-help process that clouds the realisation of collective social misery and structural violence.

Self-care as the strategy of resistance is a response to the situation that deems violence as a standard of lived experience, so as not to allow despair or burnout to undermine our ability to perform justice.

However, there is another history of self-care that emerges — that of Black feminists. These are activists within movements and individuals at the margins who not only survived violence and oppression, but also did so through self-care. This lineage reintroduces self-care as a practice of self-preservation. Black feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is political warfare.” It is important to note that although Lorde was living with a cancer diagnosis, on top of confronting racism, sexism, and a hostile world, self-care for her was fundamentally a survival practice—not a pursuit of comfort, but a response to a world that was aggressively threatening her very existence.

Considering that we exist in a world of constant violence, self-care is refusing to be devoured by forces like violence, sexism, racism or other forces that would erase us. It is a process of taking care of our bodies, minds, communities and our emotional abilities not as an end in itself, but as a basis of enduring struggle. Self-care as the strategy of resistance is a response to the situation that deems violence as a standard of lived experience, so as not to allow despair or burnout to undermine our ability to perform justice.

This political dimension of self-care has been taken up in feminist scholarship and activist praxis precisely because it pushes back against the co-optation of care into a neoliberal, individualistic frame. Inna Michaeli’s article “Self-Care: An Act of Political Warfare or a Neoliberal Trap?” argues that beyond capitalist trends there are deep roots in feminist movements where self-care and collective care help build sustainable, transformative spaces for activists and communities working against injustice. Such work recognises that well-being itself is not separate from justice; it is part of the long struggle against violence and oppression.

Moreover, this politicised method of care does not separate self-care and community. Instead, it places it in a wider web of collective care and mutual support that holds movements and people together in the long run. The concept of self-care as something personal has long been criticised by feminist theorists who have insisted that care exists within a social context and within a relationship. According to the care ethics scholars, care is not an activity that people perform alone but rather entangled in webs of interdependence, responsibility, and political struggle.

Self-care in the face of pervasive violence is not an individual luxury but a political discipline. It is a daily choice to guard our emotional integrity, to tend to wounds, to build solidarity, and to prepare ourselves for the work ahead.

A deeper sense of self-care in a world that is choking on its own blood would involve first accepting political causes and conditions of that very violence. It involves perceiving that the crises that we experience are not exceptions, but manifestations of systems that are predicated on harm, extraction, and dehumanisation. During these periods, self-care does not mean retreating into pain, it means developing inner strengths. We require reflection, resilience, emotional grounding, and community connection so that we can continue to see clearly, make good decisions and to continue long-term campaigns to change.

Self-care is to demand that we cannot afford to wait until some abstract better time to consider our wellbeing.  Self-care is an ethical requirement at this moment. It is in the work of transformation that the violence of the present requires us to cultivate our intellectual and emotional resources, which are precisely the tools of transformation. We are not saints in an escapist sense, we are saints in the sense that we have decided to choose compassion, endurance, and solidarity collectively in a world, which continually provokes bitterness. In this respect, self-care turns into a promise not to lose our humanity, our relational abilities, and our moral attention because we will not give into passivity.

This orientation also makes the concept of sacrifice that usually becomes romantic in activist circles, of burning out as a noble cause, of dissolving oneself in the name of a cause, difficult. Radical self-care in its turn says that our bodies and psyches cannot be disposed of. It is these tools that justice movements are forced to work with. Care, not only of ourselves, but also of each other, is a resilience mode, a means of holding on to hope in moments of despair, and a means of longstanding battles against structural violence. In fact, the politics of self-care scholars highlight that collective practices of care, which are community-based, are critical to the resistance to isolation and movement maintenance during pressure.

Self-care in the face of pervasive violence is not an individual luxury but a political discipline. It is a daily choice to guard our emotional integrity, to tend to wounds, to build solidarity, and to prepare ourselves for the work ahead. It is what allows us to keep our eyes open, our compassion intact, and our hands ready for the work of creating a world not defined by violence but by justice, dignity, and care for all.

Sazida Nahrin Auhona is an undergrad student who lives somewhere between art, literature, and philosophy. You can reach out to her at [email protected] 

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