Self-Care Doesn’t Have To Be Selfish

BOOK REVIEW: SIT DOWN TO RISE UP: HOW RADICAL SELF-CARE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD by Shelly Tygielski –

Oct. 28, 2021 – “In emergencies like when there’s a death or a hurricane, everyone steps up,” says Shelly. “But we need to normalize that kind of community care even when there isn’t a disaster. Social media isn’t going to show you what might be happening on your street. You don’t know if your neighbor is struggling with mental illness or if they just lost their job because we just don’t talk about it. We need to create forums for these conversations.” When I ask Shelly how to create a community of care if we aren’t as organized as she is, she points out that she didn’t intend to create a huge aid organization. Her original goal was just to make sure the people in her community had enough to make it through the pandemic. She says: “We all have an opportunity to show up. There’s a beautiful Buddhist proverb that says: tend the area of the garden that you can reach. If we only took responsibility to tend to our garden, our block or, a floor in our building—forget the whole building just one floor—or our department at work, and we made sure that everyone had enough, it would transform the world.”