Our churches are burning. We are being murdered in mass.

We are forced to bury our sons. The names of our sisters are going unspoken, forgotten.

Black culture is appropriated. Black bodies are demonized and destructed.

The confederate flag is seen as heritage over hate. This country was built on our backs, a system always designed to keep us out.

We face police brutality, school push outs, gentrification, mass incarceration and death.

And yet, we must survive. Our lives matter and sometimes in the midst of it all, in the world telling us otherwise over and over and over, it’s hard to remember that. Absorbed in the movement, the anger, the fear, the sadness and the overwhelming sense of something so heavy that it cannot be named, it can be hard to remember that we must take care of our minds and our bodies.

We must be the first to treat ourselves and our fellow black folks like gold. We must nurture our #BlackMagic.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not easy and this list might not make it any easier, but nonetheless here are a few things that could be of use.

1. Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up by Eponis @ Tumblr. Everyone read this, share this, save this, please. Hang it on your wall and look at it when things are just too tough.

selfcare_printable

 

2. Diamond J. Sharp runs an entire blog dedicated to the mental health of black girls, a population whose trauma, depression and hurt is disproportionately ignored as a result of a complex system of stigma sometimes referred to as “black superwoman syndrome.”

via http://blackgirlmentalhealth.tumblr.com
via http://blackgirlmentalhealth.tumblr.com

3. Here are 6 Steps You Can Take To Start Healing From Trauma Right Now.

4. In her article Subversive Self-Care: Centering Black Women’s Wellness, Shanesha Brooks-Tatum outlines five strategies for wellness. “Ultimately,” she writes, “to take care of ourselves is to treasure ourselves, and ensure that we’ll have the longevity to continue our activist work against racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other “-isms” that attempt to circumscribe and control bodies in this world.”

5. Not yet released but on my radar is The Black Body Survival Guide. Envisioned by Intelligent Mischief, the book is an artistic and much-needed response to systemic racism. With enough support, the guide will soon be published and distributed by Intelligent Mischief, Boston-based creatives who describe themselves as “a group of Afro-Caribbean sci-fi, afro-futurist, comedians, arts, dance and theater nerds running a civic engagement hack lab.”

6. 11 Black Queer and Trans Women Discuss Self-Care in this article. Whether they revive themselves through recharging alone, by immersing themselves in their creative processes or surrounding themselves with positive friends, each of these women has gotten in touch with the practices that serve them best.

7. And last but certainly, certainly not least — a reminder from the woman who says it best, Audre Lorde.

Photo: AZ quotes

Want more content like this? Sign up for our weekly newsletter below.

[mc4wp_form] sexe shop suisse