Happy March. The rain has been steady and insistent—rivers overflowing, streets flooding, both of our dogs look permanently like waterlogged Paddington Bears in their yellow slickers.

Still, last week while walking to Alley Cat, there were two solid hours of sun, which is exactly what you want in the Mission, which is colorful and steams with a heat that isn’t ever a reality for San Francisco: for this part of the city to be somehow hotter than the rest of it. An open-faced sky.

The two hours of sun, plus the two bulbs finally emerging from my tulip bed, are offering a bit of respite: March will be easier, if only because it signifies the end of Winter, which has felt particularly long and sad this year.

When the rainy season hits, I find myself dreaming of the high desert. Tuscon, my grandmother’s old, flat ranch house with the baskets large enough to hold my child body, cold terra cotta tiles that matched the shapely ones curving like fault lines on the roof. Cacti with their arms in the air, holding atop their heads screech owl nests and bats and colorless flowers.

Instead, because it’s clearly a year to stay close to home, I find myself going on weekend trips to places I loved as a child, places that signaled to me, when we moved from Southern California to Northern in the late-nineties, that we’d found abundance in the form of rocky shorelines and tide pools.

My mom, sister, and I took my niece and nephew to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium at the beginning of February, a belated Christmas present. We rented a little house in Seaside, and cooked, and played endless games of Uno, and gave each other nicknames, and spent one rainy day combing the streets of Cannery Row, eating salt water taffy and looking at the leggy jellyfish and seizing any moment when the sun disentangled itself from the clouds.

My favorite exhibit has always been the giant female octopus, even if she has crammed herself into invisibility in spaces the size of a bell jar.

Octopodes are extraordinarily smart, though that isn’t exactly why I admire them. I love them because they are seemingly equal parts fierce and vulnerable.

An octopus can make her skin raised or bumpy, change color, turn to spikes, or do anything necessary in order to match the landscape around her, by controlling the projections on her papillae. While this is a feature of both male and female octopodes, it is usually the female who deploys this skill, turning to a one-woman battalion if her young are threatened.

They have three hearts. Their blood is blue. Octopuses are boneless, which is how they can wedge themselves into jars, behind tight coral or curl around objects or plants in the sea.

Octopus mating rituals are nothing special. Many marine biologists have remarked that they look like “they’re just going about their business.” No pomp. The male octopus has a mating arm, which he extends and inserts into a cavity on the female octopus, keeping his distance lest she try to ensnare and strangle him.

“The males have a host of tricks to survive the mating process,” says Katherine Harmon Courage of BBC Earth. “Some of them can quite literally mate at arm’s length. Others sneak into a female’s den disguised as another gal, or sacrifice their entire mating arm to the female and then make a hasty retreat.” 

Female octopodes are larger and hungrier than their male counterparts. It’s every bit as likely that they’ll mate with a male as strangle and eat him. Conversely, the females die shortly after laying their many eggs, dissolving their own bodies to feed their young. Joan Halifax uses this as an example of pathological altruism in her book “Standing on the Edge”.

As I stood at the edge of her tank at the aquarium, which was covered with small, white, rectangular signs that featured a picture of a camera with an X drawn through it and words reading “DO NOT FLASH THE OCTOPUS”, I watched men of all sizes and shapes shine their iPhones directly in her one visible eye. I thought about the lines from the Mary Szybist poem:

The Lushness of It 

It’s not that the octopus wouldn’t love you—
not that it wouldn’t reach for you 
with each of its tapering arms:

you’d be as good as anyone, I think,
to an octopus.  But the creatures of the sea,
like the sea, don’t think

about themselves, or you.  Keep on floating there,
cradled, unable to burn.  Abandon 
yourself to the sway, the ruffled eddies, abandon

your heavy legs to the floating meadows 
            of seaweed and feel 
                        the bloom of phytoplankton, spindrift, sea-
spray, barnacles.  In the dark benthic realm, the slippery neckton glide over
the abyssal plains: as you float, feel 
                                    that upwelling of cold, deep water touch
the skin stretched over
                          your spine.  Feel 
fished for and slapped.  No, it’s not that the octopus 
wouldn’t love you.  If it touched,

if it tasted you, each of its three 
hearts would turn red.

Will theologians of any confession refute me?
Not the bluecap salmon.  Not its dotted head.

The fourth time the flash flashed—when the octopus didn’t reach through the glass and strangle and eat the man next to me—I put my body between him and her. “You’re done here,” I said firmly. He looked at me with surprise, his own pupils large in the low light. I could see myself shining in his own pupils, arms crossed, a good foot shorter. Something moved in the blackness there, and I felt it as surely as a heart turning red: this is a man who has hit women. He looked at the people gathered around us, the children with their faces flat to the thick glass, and he walked wordlessly away.

Perhaps I love the female octopus because she is like the very best people I love: shape-shifting according to circumstance, principled in her priorities, and completely no-bullshit. When she needs to, she exercises extraordinary boundaries. At the same time, she knows when it’s time to acknowledge a great cause—in her case, the need to keep alive an entire next generation of youth.

The no-bullshit of animals means there’s no performance of self, no need to deconstruct the way a self is socialized. Maybe animals are a living manifestation of honesty.

Perhaps I love the female octopus because I have reached a level of self-awareness that includes knowing what I struggle to become.

When I was young, my adopted dad used to take the door off my room when I was in trouble, which always felt like the worst punishment imaginable. He read our emails, our diaries, listened in on our phone calls—he asked his friends around town to keep an eye on me and my sisters. When I had my first kiss in the almond orchard by my middle school, he knew about it before I even registered what had happened. Boundaries seemed, until embarrassingly recently, like a luxury that only the very well-adjusted and heartiest-hearted among us got to have.

Context: my adoptive dad was abusive. I got in trouble for everything from legitimate fuck-ups of youth (skipping class) to things that just bothered him (burning incense). As a manipulative, MENSA-level genius with a history of Vietnam-era warfare, my adoptive dad know exactly the kind of violation taking a door off the hinges was for a teenage girl.

Boundaries seemed, until embarrassingly recently, like a luxury that only the very well-adjusted and heartiest-hearted among us got to have.
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To circle back around–maybe the female octopus isn’t the best example of boundaries. However, she’s a really great example of understanding where her boundaries are. Anger, for example, is a useful tool because it shows us where our boundaries are, and thus, how they’ve been violated. And while we can’t be 100% certain that the female octopus is angry when she strangles and eats her mate (she might just be hungry, and that’s okay), she has a robust understanding of how to get where she needs to be in the world. She doesn’t care about whether or not her behavior is socially acceptable.

This is the moment where I meet and try to channel the octopus—there seems to be a lesson in this for me/us: the realization that boundaries are necessary for cultivating and protecting the work you’ve done on yourself. That psychic, emotional, physical, intellectual, romantic, platonic energy are expendable resources that all work together in an ecosystemic way.

We are taught, especially people socialized as female, that:

• we have no right to boundaries
• putting up boundaries means sacrificing love and care
• putting up boundaries means people will leave rather than invest the time to respect them
• putting up boundaries is cold-hearted, or less vulnerable than not
• putting up boundaries means you are inflexible, unavailable to change

Furthermore, that forgiveness is not only a) mandatory, but b) must look like inviting someone back into your space and life, and lastly, c) the work of the person most harmed in the situation to do and do alone.

On boundaries, the magnificent Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes says:

“What steals energy that you do not fully grant, is a thief in the house of the psyche. Whether it be a person, a place, a memory, a conversation, a meeting, or you yourself being the leaking seal around the chamber wherein the treasure is kept.

Think on these things if you lose energy easily, and make the adjustments to what you can and cannot engage with, accordingly, as you can, as is within your will and within your power.

We all have an energy range, as does a light bulb. Put too little or too much or too sustainedly or not sustainedly enough energy through the vehicle, and the light will not be the brightest as it has been constructed for/to/with/about/regarding.”

In her podcast ‘Tarot for the Wild Soul’, Lindsay Mack says this of boundaries: “The management of the fences around the property of yourself are necessary to make sure your crops and cultivated self is taken care of.”

What a concept to realize that setting boundaries is something that usually happens because you love the people involved. My friend Joey Gould insists, “’No’ is a love word.”

Here’s the not-so-secret thing about introspection in winter: the season is, itself, remarkably boundaried. You have less energy, sleep more, are more accountable to the animal of yourself because the borders of your landscape (the weather, the city, the clothes, the darker days) are starkly clear. And perhaps tulips, and sun, both respectively breaking from their bulbs and the clouds, teach us that we must hold on to the borders of ourselves even as the world around us becomes less obviously boundaried.

The lessons we learn from the female octopus may not be one of taking her boundaries as our own, but rather, understanding what our own boundaries are. What’s more: how to be both fiercely protective and generously tender at the same time.

2018 was undoubtedly the year of wellness. With #fitspo trending on social media at every turn, Generation Z supposedly drinking less than any age group before them, and trending health fads showing no sign of abating, it’s clear that society’s obsession with how we eat, exercise, and care for our bodies is going nowhere. But although Instagram would have us believing that we’re all ditching vodka sodas and a kebab for kale smoothies, the statistics tell a very different story.

A recent UK study suggests that alcohol related deaths among women are at their highest rate since records began, while an estimated 300,000 deaths in the U.S. per year are currently obesity related. Growing swatches of fitness enthusiasts may be hashtagging their morning yoga session and staking out their nearest #foodporn vegan joint, but it is clear that for all the talk of wellness, we are in a health epidemic that shows little sign of slowing.

For many this paradox may be puzzling. As our society continues to prioritize health and self-care, why are so many falling behind? Exercise and eating well is increasingly accessible, with videos and advice from experienced personal trainers and nutritionists only ever a click away—we no longer need to stake out a small fortune for the service. But although wellness may be trending it remains deeply exclusive, its Lululemon clad roots embedded in the class structures that still dominate modern society.

It is clear that for all the talk of wellness, we are in a health epidemic that shows little sign of slowing.
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An expensive gym membership and a fridge stuffed with hummus may seem second nature for some, but millions of others have grown-up leading a very different lifestyle. For entire communities, gym class may have been more likely to have been the dreaded repetitiveness of weekly laps of the playing field instead of a range of activities with proper coaching and inter-school competition. School lunches may well have been beige in color, and a celebratory meal out was more likely burgers and fries at a local diner than a posh nosh with plenty of protein and greenery arranged elaborately on a child size plate.

As much as we may cringe and delight in equal measure at Overheard in Whole Foods you can bet your bottom dollar that little Tarquin, asking his mom for fettuccine rather than farfalle for his lunch, will grow up knowing his avocado from his artichokes. Our attitudes towards wellness are ingrained in us from a young age and these deeply entrenched outlooks are not easily overturned.

Privilege defines how we approach our health well into adulthood. Although the archetype of the yummy mummy squeezing in a pilates class before picking the kids up from school may be a faintly uncomfortable gender stereotype for some, for others it speaks an untenable truth of inequality. Those who can afford childcare or to give up their jobs to care for their children are more likely to have the time and money to exercise, to prepare nutritious meals, and to educate themselves on health. With unaffordable childcare options comes vast disparities between the haves and have-nots that disproportionately affects women.

The parent working fifty hours a week just to cover nursery costs may have to prioritize their child’s health at the expense of their own. Mothers unable to afford childcare altogether who are forced to give up work may have to prioritize putting food on the table full stop, without having the luxury of ensuring that this covers their kids’ five a day.   

Beyond parenthood, the seeming ignorance of the wellness set can also be infuriating. Influencers sunnily declaring that their home workouts are something “anyone can fit into their day!” are preaching to an extremely privileged subgroup. The fact is that multitudes of women don’t have the time, space, or social environment to roll out a yoga mat in their living room and cram in some burpees.

Likewise, bloggers who blithely assert that anyone can give up gluten ignore that to do so requires access to a half decent selection of gluten-free products at their local store, the time and energy to research alternatives, and the cash to cater for this dietary preference (not to mention no other dietary restrictions that might make going gluten-free even more difficult).

Embracing a plant-based lifestyle in a nutritious manner requires a level of food education that not everyone has been fortunate enough to have, and enough food security for your primary concern to not be that your family is getting enough calories to live, period. Giving up drinking requires being part of a social circle that fits with a booze-free lifestyle. Practicing yoga safely requires a membership fee that not everyone can afford, and is often an environment that alienates anyone who isn’t white and already skinny. “Wellness” is for people who are already doing well.

Statistically the links between social class and health are undeniable and terrifying. Residents of affluent counties in the U.S. can expect to live up to twenty years longer than their poorer counterparts, with variables such as quality of healthcare, smoking, drinking, and physical inactivity cited as major contributory factors to soaring mortality. Fitness bloggers declaring that shaping up and switching their nutrition plan changed their life are perpetuating a message that fundamentally fails to correlate with reality.

It suggests that something as simple as what we put into our bodies defines our quality of life. It fails to account for the numerous other factors—social and economic—that are far more significant determinants of how well we live and which ultimately defines the food and exercise we are able to afford to enjoy.  The conversation around wellness seems to too often sidestep the things that actually make us well—affordable healthcare, access to nutritious food, and available sexual health care amongst many others.

Wellness is for people who are already doing well.
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Suggesting that the wellness culture is the new normal lifestyle places onus on the underprivileged to eat and exercise better. In reality this is far from feasible, a seismic gulf in opportunities, education, and healthcare options holding back thousands of people from emulating a lifestyle we are urged to aspire towards. Can we really preach self-care when, as a society, we are failing to care for the thousands left behind by a flawed and deeply exclusive system?

As the gap between rich and poor becomes ever deeper our conversations around the wellness culture need to be reframed to understand it as a privilege. Instead of declaring that young people are giving up alcohol, signing up to gyms, and embracing clean eating we need to be honest about the specific subset that this lifestyle caters for, and look to who is getting left behind.

4 Self-Care Practices For When Working As A Woman Of Color Has Got You Down

Practicing self-care at work, or in response to issues at work, can be the difference between feeling hopeless and isolated or inspired and optimistic.

flickr/WOCinTech Chat

By Alisha Acquaye

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

Self-care is the battle cry of our generation. It is a realization that — in order for us to be better activists, feminists, and friends — we have to take time out to check in with ourselves, heal wounds, and feel loved.

It is especially significant today as we socially, politically and culturally exist in a war with a goal of dismantling the white heteronormative patriarchy and achieve true human rights and equality.

Self-care is a testament to the ability to understand, nourish and identify with our complex, layered and ever-evolving selves. It is a self-centering decision to acknowledge, address and cater to our bodies needs — spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally and more.

I’ve been intentionally practicing self-care for a few years now, first starting by cleaning and clearing my mind, evaluating friendships, and recognizing personality and relationship patterns.

But, more recently, I’ve been considering how to practice self-care in response to toxic or traumatizing experiences and environments.

Self-care is the battle cry of our generation.

As you’ve read in my last articles, working as a black woman in predominantly white offices can be mentally and emotionally exhausting.

While working on this series, I began thinking deeply about how women of color and marginalized identities can practice self-care when they find themselves in these environments.

When I felt alone, exhausted by microaggressions, or undervalued or frustrated at work, I developed a few self-care methods to cope:

• Arriving early to enjoy breakfast and a cup of tea in the silence of the office.
• Scheduling lunch or coffee dates with other people of color or employees I wanted to learn from.
• Going for walks or taking trips to the roof during my breaks.
• Planning trips, which gave me something to look forward to on long weekends or holidays.

Most significantly, I formed a group of close friends of different backgrounds and sexualities who gave me even more life. We held each other down, provided support and offered billions of laughs.

We validated each other when we endured daunting racist, sexist or ageist experiences at work and inspired one another to take on new projects or assert ourselves in our teams.

Most of all, we made each other feel less alone: we were reflections of each other that affirmed one another’s existence and importance.

I found that these remedies — especially my friends — guided me towards more positive outlooks and peace of mind, which, coincidentally, helped me refocus on what I was really passionate about: the work I was doing, and the next chapters in my career.

Practicing self-care at work, or in response to issues at work, can be the difference between feeling hopeless and isolated or inspired and optimistic. It can help you refocus and realize what you value in your work experience and how to obtain it.

While writing this, I realized that not everyone has access to these self-care solutions and even less may have strong friend connections at work. So I wanted to explore different steps that people can take to care for themselves and make a difference in their communities. Here are four of them:

1. Engage in passions and projects that reaffirm your greatness.

One of the best decisions I’ve made as a post-grad working girl is signing up for writing classes. As writing is what I do for a living, it can sometimes feel like a job and less like a passion.

Writing classes — especially creative writing ones — allow me to exercise my imagination and strengthen my talents as a writer. The result: empowerment and freedom.

Going to work can be that much more daunting and depressing if you’re not only experiencing microaggressions but on top of that, aren’t in love with your job.

For those whose work doesn’t align with their passions or whose job is for survival and not creative stimulation, participating in projects or activities outside of work can be instrumental to your emotional health and confidence.

For this reason, one of the keys to self-care lies in impressing yourself, harvesting your talents and energies into something that’s meaningful to you, and watching yourself excel.

It’s especially important for women of color, LGBTQIA+, people of different abilities and more, to find creative outlets that empower them and strengthens their skills and confidence.

It’s one step to being better leaders and more expressive and assertive professionals. It’s going after what you want and recognizing your power and potentials.

2. Find a mentor — or become one!

One of my long-term goals is to find a mentor who can help guide me on my professional journey. Ideally, I’d love for her to be a Black woman who works in media, who understands the challenges of having an intersectional identity in professional spaces and who’s learned to navigate these setbacks in exponential ways.

Of course, I’ve had several mentors of different genders and backgrounds who have assisted me personally and professionally, but I imagine a bond with a Black woman mentor would feel more personal and inspiring.

How To Survive A White Workplace As A Person Of Color

Mentorship is a transformative force in marginalized communities. Having a role model who looks like you and has achieved something you aspire to makes your dreams feel more possible, tangible.

If you’re able, I also encourage you to become a mentor. Being a mentor to someone else is just as important as having one of your own. It’s a small but significant way of giving back to your community and helping another person reach their potentials.

3. Organize meetings to address workplace microaggressions

It is no secret that women and people of color can experience microaggressions at work, ranging from someone inappropriately touching your hair to a male coworker belittling or ignoring your ideas.

The challenge, however, is addressing these issues in a healthy and productive way.

Sometimes, talking to your manager or privately confronting a coworker isn’t enough. And as a marginalized person, taking this action can feel like our jobs are at a greater risk than the person who inflicted the microaggression.

Mentorship is a transformative force in marginalized communities.

A coworker at my last job — a Black woman — took initiative by organizing inclusivity workshops for the whole company to attend. To be sure, this is not an easy responsibility, but the payoff can lead to productive conversations and greater awareness of office issues.

Meetings and workshops can also be safer alternatives to speaking to a superior or confronting an employee directly. It opens space for conversation without having to put yourself on the line.

If you do decide to organize a meeting, it could be a great opportunity to discuss how to make company culture safer and more welcoming for marginalized people and strategize inclusive hiring methods.

4. Start meetups for women of color.

Self-care can mean building community or actively surrounding yourself with people who nurture your soul.

This year, I co-founded a bimonthly brunch series for my friends of color, where we share food and engage in conversations about self-care and our lives.

It has been the highlight of my year: not only do I feel a stronger sense of community with women of color in my city, I’ve also gained a renewed sense of leadership, therapy, and event organizing.

I have a friend who engages in dinners for Black women in media. She says that some of the highlights of these dinners is the shared community of expressing work and career-related frustrations, as well as the casual networking.

Not only does she feel validated and comforted, she meets people she can possibly collaborate with in the future.

Organizing a dinner, brunch, book club or any other social gathering for your specific groups and identities is a great way to strengthen your bonds in those communities.

The suggestions above are meant to serve as methods to empower and excite you when you’re down about work or try to eradicate office microaggressions you may face. However, they are in no way meant to entirely resolve any unhappiness, unfulfillment or discriminations you may experience in response to your intersectional identity.

Things can get really tough and, if they do, I hope you are able to consider finding a new job or going the entrepreneurial route — maybe you’re meant to create or start something new within your field.

Ultimately, I am no expert on self-care — I’m just a passionate self-care enthusiast. But there are many people who do have expertise.

Originally, I hoped to interview Gianne Doherty, a wellness maven, for this story, but unfortunately did not get her reply in time. She recently held her first W.E.L.L. Summit: a convention promoting self-care and inclusivity amongst women of color.

There’s also Lauren Ash of the Black Girl in Om podcast and initiative, who frequently discusses the importance of women of color practicing and implementing self-care into their daily lives.

Ash and Doherty are two wonderful resources who inspire me to use self-care as an innovative and personal form of resistance during these trying political and cultural times.

I hope you’re able to find peace and comfort — whether through my advice and others’ — especially in the one place where all you want to do is make money, or make a difference. After all, negative vibes and oppressive forces should never get in the way of stacking your paper.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/how-to-help-the-cause-when-you-need-help-yourself-c83722b5d84a-2/ Tue, 22 Nov 2016 17:57:13 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=6452 Read more]]> Active compassion for your mental illness is a form of resistance.

Content warning: suicidal ideation

Last week, I did something I hadn’t done since coming out of my last mental health crisis: I took all the sharp knives, razors, and scissors in sight and hid them in a plastic bag under the sink. Out of sight, out of mind, or so my magical thinking goes. I have bipolar disorder and struggle with complex-PTSD. Often I want to die; last week and this week were not unlike many others.

Like many, I have found the American elections triggering and excruciating. I have sat for days fixated on a feed of pain and terror scrolling before my eyes. I see the flood of calls for action and organized resistance: the ever-growing lists of numbers to call and email (senators, governors, mayors, the media, etc.) and organizations to donate to; the petitions to call out family members and friends; the protests and rallies to attend; and everything else presented with the same level of urgency. My mind fragments with information overload: the guides, the think pieces, the memes, the latest reports of fuckduggery.

But how can I be of any help to any cause when I’m truly mentally sick? When a good portion of my time and energy has been focused on resisting the desire to kill myself? How do I resist feelings of worthlessness and despair when I feel worthless in supporting the cause right now?

As someone who often battles with suicidal ideation, I’m a bit “old hat” when it comes to strategizing new ways to resist self-destructive thought patterns. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had to navigate a storm of emotions and combat feelings that have threatened to pull me under while still finding ways to contribute where and when I can.

For those who contend with suicidal ideation as a lived, perhaps daily, reality, below is a guide to engagement and self-care, as well as a few approaches to activism.

Have Empathy For Yourself

I have, first and foremost, forced myself to acknowledge this fact: I am sick. I am limited. Even when I’m feeling mentally well, my health is so precarious that I’m one triggering phone call or email away from plunging back into suicidal ideation. It is imperative that I prioritize my mental health, even when the drum calls are banging otherwise.

But when you are mentally ill, prioritizing one’s mental health in the face of calamity can feel like the ultimate form of selfishness, leading to a shame spiral marked by feelings of worthlessness, particularly in times of great need for social action.

I have to ask myself, do I extend the same judgmental attitudes toward others working in the cause whom I admire? Is it reasonable for me to expect others to put their mental health so at risk by being on all the time? And if not, why do I apply this judgement to myself? Would I really want any of my activist friends to drive themselves to suicide? Can I not work on extending the same love and empathy I have for others towards myself?

I have to ask myself, do I extend the same judgmental attitudes toward others working in the cause whom I admire?
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Realize that active compassion for your illness is a form of resistance.

Resist Internalized Ableism

Understand that not all calls to action are directed at you, and resist descending into shame over not being in a position to do specific activities. When we see calls that are beyond our ability and means, rather than allow those messages to contribute to feelings of abject worthlessness, perhaps we need to allow that those calls are meant for those with the means to take action, who have been so far complacent.

There is a difference between those who haven’t called out racist/misogynistic/trans and homophobic family members because it is hard, awkward, and uncomfortable, and refusing to speak to abusive family members who are the source of trauma in which any conversation might trigger suicidal thoughts.

If using the phone sends you into a panic, understand that calling congress is not for you. Likewise if you are agoraphobic and can’t attend protests and rallies. When you are struggling with suicidal ideation, making room for these nuances and allowances for yourself can be the difference between life and death.

When battling fragmented identity, trauma, feelings of worthlessness, and suicidal ideation, it can be all too easy to project ableism inward (and outward as well). Resist the poisonous capitalistic concept that your value depends on productivity. Acknowledge that this often leads to counterproductive fronting and “good allyship” performativity even at the best of times.

Try reflecting on your intrinsic value. Keep reminding yourself: My life has value outside a lack of productivity. And this applies even when thinking about activist activities.

Keep reminding yourself: My life has value outside a lack of productivity.
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Reflect instead on how your struggles with mental illness bring perspectives and skills to the table that are unique. Do not underestimate the value of your empathy even at times when you cannot afford to act on it. The mentally-sick are well acquainted with having to contend with an overwhelming storm of emotions, which might be new terrain for many. Don’t discount your experience with your struggles. Even catastrophizing, kept in check, can be a positive skill, as it can help others imagine worst-case scenarios and plan contingencies for resistance.

Separate The Fragility Of Your Mental State From White Fragility

Having a mental illness does not give you a free pass on white fragility. Last week, at a time when I was feeling mentally fraught, a friend made a post calling out white people, and I have to admit I did feel hurt about being indirectly called out regarding some of my own recent behaviors (no, it was not safety pins). I also had to acknowledge that I was too sick in that moment to contend with those feelings of knee-jerk defensiveness, and had to resist taking up the space to act on how the post made me feel.

My mental health requires attention; my white tears do not. There is a difference between ignoring your problematic behaviors and persisting in them, and acknowledging that you might be too sick to address call-outs in this moment. At these times, it might be better to tap out for a little while to come back and reflect on how you can make transformative changes, and do better, when your mental health is a little less fragile. And while calls for succor to help alleviate anguish stemming from mental health issues are always appropriate, taking up the space of others, particularly people of color, to validate hurt feelings around your own problematic behaviors separate from your mental illness are not.

Map What You Can And Cannot Do

When simple tasks such as brushing my teeth or cracking open a Babybel cheese become unsurmountable, I have to acknowledge I can do very little, whether it is one of my worst days, worst weeks, or worst months. In those moments, even self-care looks like doing my best not to give into feelings of shame about crying in bed all day in the fetal position.

But not every day is my worst day. Some days, all I can do to offer support is to signal boost activist writers online. If the only thing you can do is retweet when you are too unwell to do otherwise, you have taken part. On better days, I can manage to write something. On good days, I can attend a protest, knowing I have to pace myself, I cannot go the distance, and I will have to bow out after an hour or two.

Sometimes it is easier to learn not to compare ourselves to others than to learn not to compare our most unwell self with our most well self. Map out a staggered checklist of things you can and can’t do based on the spectrum of your mental health. Celebrate even the tiniest of victories, like remembering to take your meds on bad days, assuring yourself that when you are well enough you can and will do more, no matter how insignificant that contribution might feel at the time.

What To Do When There Are No Good Days

There might be an endless stream of worst days. During the height of my last mental crisis, it felt particularly cruel to be called upon to stay on this earth because I was “needed” when I was battling the worst psychic pain.

Instead, I try to resist ideation around suicide as an act of martyrdom for the cause. It has been reported that a Neo-Nazi site has been encouraging its readers to troll targeted people into suicide. Resist adopting a strategy endorsed by the enemy by turning projections of their violence inwards.

Drawing upon all the resources you need is a form of activism in combatting ableism.
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Do not give into feelings of being too much of a burden when you are in deep despair and psychic pain because you imagine resources are better spent elsewhere with world conditions as they are. Reach out (I know how fucking hard this is, I know, I know). Make the calls to suicide hotlines. Or reach out to text or chat support if phone calls are too overwhelming. Understand that drawing upon all the resources you need is a form of activism in combatting ableism. Issues around mental health and suicide have value. YOU HAVE VALUE.

You have value today, you have value tomorrow, and you have value all the days to come.

Resources:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1–800–273–8255
Crisis Text Line