In the past several years, self-care has become a hot topic in our society. Whether it’s social media tips on how to find more time for self-care in your day, a new app to track your self-care habits, or self-care workshops offered in the workplace, self-care is everywhere.
And, while it is undoubtedly important to care for ourselves, it’s not without its challenges. What does self-care look like for someone who can’t afford to take a day off work to take care of themselves? How can we practice self-care when we’re sick? When will a working single parent find time to develop a daily meditation practice? Why do we always tell people to take time every day to care for themselves when, in actuality, what they may need is for someone to care for them?
This is where community care comes into play.
Community care can mean many different things. It can be small, personal actions such as bringing a meal to a neighbor who is sick, it can be large-scale, organized efforts such as volunteering for an organization that serves others, and it can be everything in-between. Community care can be as simple as reaching out to a friend to see how they’re doing and making sure they know you’re here for them, or as complicated as creating and organizing a support group. At the end of the day, community care is the practice of individuals coming together to support and assist one another in a thousand different ways.
Yet, with community care being such a meaningful, versatile, and powerful way to better ourselves and others, you would be hard pressed to find someone in this day and age who can define it. At the same time, you would be equally hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have some idea of what self-care is. Why is that?
There are many reasons for this, but it may boil down to the fact that community care goes against the grain of our U.S. society. For example, in western society, especially in America, individualism is highly valued. We’re taught that everyone can succeed on their own if they just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Moreover, any discussion about passions such as music, art, sports, or anything else often ends with the question of who is the “best.” We as a society focus on individual accomplishments, so it makes sense that individual self-care is typically valued more than collective community care.
Additionally, it’s no secret that the more money can be made from something in our society, the more popular it can become. In that vein, there are many ways in which one can make a profit from self-care. From yoga studios and gym memberships to spas, expensive bath bombs, meditation apps, and more, self-care can create monetary wealth in countless ways. However, community care is less marketable. Typically, nobody is making money by cooking soup to bring to a sick friend, donating old baby clothes to a coworker, or organizing a support group for recovering addicts. Lastly, community care has been extremely common in BIPOC communities for centuries. Therefore, in a society with countless racial inequities, a society in which values and beliefs from BIPOC individuals are all-too-often dismissed, it’s no surprise that the practice of community care can be considered a radical one.
So, if community care is so radical, it would make sense that it’s hard to find, right? In fact, community care is easy to find, but only if you know where to look: the third place. The third place is a sociological term referring to a place that is not home (the first place) or work (the second place) where you belong and can find community. Third places are not as commonplace as they were several decades ago, but they are still prevalent. Some examples of third places are cafes, book clubs, dance studios, gyms, places of worship, community centers, sports teams, activity meetup groups, and more. However, as an example, not all sports teams are third places; sometimes they are places where people show up, practice or play a game, and go home. So what elevates a third place from a place you frequent to a place where you can find and foster community care?
Vulnerability.
Being vulnerable in fostering community care can look like opening up to others about your struggles, giving them opportunities to support you. Or, conversely, vulnerability in community care can look like offering your help with something people may or may not take you up on, allowing people to look for you when they need support. In both cases, we need to be vulnerable, having faith that the people we are trying to build community care with also want to build up and support one another. All they need is an opportunity.
