Our team at Adiós Barbie share what self-care means to us vs. what we are told it should be.
Pia Guerrero – Founder/Editor
Having been a pioneer in the body image movement, I’ve seen countless memes and articles over decades declaring: Love your body! As if finding love for yourself came from a simple declaration. In reality, love in this sense is nothing more than a fix for something you feel is wrong with you. That’s no how to love yourself. You have to love yourself through loving actions, which are way more effective than declarations or affirmations.
IMHO, You can’t love yourself until you know yourself. For, if you knew yourself you would see that you are an incredible gift to the world with so much to offer. If you knew yourself you would see so much beauty in your inner softness. If you knew yourself you would accept the good with the bad and give yourself a break.
The same goes for self-care as both are acts of self-compassion. Self-care is the act of loving yourself. It is not a fire extinguisher you pull out when the stress has overcome you with overwhelm or exhaustion. Our cultural obsession with FOMO, social media, and distraction leaves many of us feeling overworked, unheard, unseen, afraid, or numb. So what’s the answer? Ongoing acts of contemplation, joy, physical care, creative endeavors, connection with others and yes even a hot bubble bath. There is no right or wrong way to engage in self-care. The only guideline is to do what makes you feel good frequently. We call this “feeding your plant”. As a plant can’t grow without water, food, and sunlight.
Alexandra Barbera – Writing & Publishing Fellow
For most of my life I overlooked self-care as some mundane task I checked off my to-do list. Drinking enough water, washing my face with overpriced cleanser, exercise a few times a week — this is self-care right? Only after I became familiar with Adiós Barbie and it’s message did I realize it is so much more. Firstly, Self-care is nothing without Self-love. Truly loving yourself is loving the brightest and darkest parts of yourself.
Self-care is not just about the physical but emotional and mental as well. Emotionally, I incorporate mediation for at least 10 minutes a day. Physically, I can now say I like going on a run (even though I’m out of breath every 20 steps) but I’ve pushed myself out of my comfort zone. I now unapologetically dance when I want to, in my room, on the line for dumplings, on the L train– wherever, because it makes me happy. Mentally, I police how many hours I spend on Instagram consuming toxic media. Self-care is not this perfectly tied gift that you give to yourself and it shouldn’t be, it’s messy, hard, fun but in the end it is your Journey.
Kacey Clark — Writing & Publishing Fellow
As a child, self care for me basically just looked like living. I took care of my needs and addressed my heart’s cravings without apologizing, holding back, or second guessing. But as I grew older I started to put productivity, time, money, and external/extrinsic measures of value and worth before my own innate knowledge that I am enough as I am and deserve love and care. This was a huge unlearning process for me over the past few years, and now I’m at a point where I can once again engage in self care in most every aspect of my life and constantly challenge dominant ideologies of who I should be and what I should be doing. Because to me, self care is the ultimate form of productivity.
Self care varies for me from day to day, month to month, and season to season. Some days it’s waking up early to watch the sunrise, others it’s staying up late because I’m having such a good conversation with a friend. Sometimes it’s spinach and walks, sometimes it’s chocolate and naps, and other times it’s all of these things at once. To me, self care is a radical form of resistance that asserts your value and worth in a world that is constantly asking for you to prove it, and it exercises my autonomy by allowing me to trust myself to meet my needs and meet them as I see fit. It’s liberating to know that as I grow and change, my body, mind, and soul will crave different things at different times, and my self care practices can address this. I truly believe self care is the ultimate form of healing and I will continue advocating for it as long as we live in a culture and society that puts profit before people and doing before being.
Emily Derouin – Outreach and Development Fellow
Self-care was an elusive concept for me in much of my life. As a child, I was doing self care naturally. I jumped, climbed, ate, slept, and laughed whenever I wanted to. As I moved into my teenage years I started to ignore what I needed. Some of my self-care started to feel too childish. Some of my self care left me worried people would no longer want to hang out with me if they knew I’d rather read than watch reality TV. As I got older, self-care morphed into something that I didn’t need. I subconsciously wore it like a badge of honor. I didn’t need self care.
Turns out, I had equated self-care with weakness and laziness. Somewhere along the journey of growing up I stopped believing that I deserved self-care and learned to deny what I truly wanted and needed. It took years of therapy, of affirming relationships, and self exploration to realize that self-care is a basic human right. Once I opened myself up to listening to what I needed not just in my body but in my soul a whole new version of self-care emerged. I didn’t need to limit my self-care to bubble baths, spa days, or any other notion of what I saw in the media. I could return to what my younger self knew intuitively: that self-care is whatever the heck I need at this moment and there is no judgement. So, sometimes I dance with my dog, sometimes I do yoga. Some days I need to color, to sing in the shower, make a pillow fort, clean my house. I now equate my self-care with being present and I am so grateful to have connected with this innate wisdom of my 6 year old self.
Dania De La Cruz – Writing & Publishing Fellow
In the past, I would think of self-care as simply eating well or getting enough sleep. I still use these self-care practices, along with others I’ve gained, including journal writing, meditation, listening to music, napping, and being in nature. Yet, my definition of self-care has expanded. I’ve realized that self-care arises from self-love. In addition to self-care practices, taking care of myself is about making choices that are alignment with who I am. It means letting go of beliefs, people, or places that are not positively serving me, and this can be extremely difficult. For instance, deciding to quit a job can be intimidating out of the fear of being unemployed or upsetting the boss. It can be hard to walk away from long-time friendships. However, sometimes what’s required to truly address your needs is more about taking action than using self-care practices. If you are tired because you’re in a toxic environment, then taking a nap or playing empowering music is only helpful to a certain extent. Using these practices will not address the root of the issue and instead will only provide a temporary relief to what you really need to do—let go and walk away.
Of course, every situation is different. Sometimes a guided visualization might be exactly what you need. I think that using self-care practices is a habit. If we are feeling overwhelmed and decide it’s time to take a break and listen to music or be in silence, then we get into the habit of being attentive to our needs. Conversely, if every time we are exhausted, we choose to keep going anyways, then we get into the habit of neglecting our needs. The more we practice taking care of ourselves, the easier it becomes.
Stephanie Leguichard — Writing & Publishing Fellow
I see self-care as something that is extremely essential but discouraged in our culture. To me, self-care is political because it conflicts with what capitalism conditions us to do. We’re taught that strength means working yourself to the bone even when you’re exhausted. And we’re conditioned to only show the parts of ourselves that are admirable, cool, or enviable. The aspects of ourselves that increase our “human capital” and make us impressive to employers and romantic prospects. We’re conditioned to care deeply about seeming successful, happy, and high-status to other people. We’re taught that it’s better to fiercely compete and one-up everyone else that it is to seem weak, vulnerable, or, god forbid, unsuccessful. This causes a lot of anxiety for me. So for me, self-care means rejecting all of that and letting myself be imperfect. It also means letting others see how imperfect I am so that we can connect over our shared imperfection.
In the modern world, I feel a constant pressure to “brand” myself, to market myself, and to carefully curate the parts of myself that I present to the world. I think this pressure is fueled by social media and by living in a system where capitalism permeates everything, even the most personal and intimate realms of our lives, like our friendships and relationships. Self-care means allowing myself to be free from these pressures by prioritizing well-being and connection over image and status. It means allowing myself to fail, make mistakes, and embarrass myself without accepting myself any less. This goes hand in hand with supporting others when they fail, make mistakes, or embarrass themselves. Extending this compassion to other people makes it much easier to be compassionate with myself and practice self-care.