Day 4: Just Show Up

If you show up to do the work, healing will happen.

                                 --Gates and Kenison, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflection on the Path of Yoga 

My yoga instructor Justine shared this quote with me in an email this morning. In response to this project, she shared with me this mantra for my self care journey. It came at an appropriate time: I've been having a difficult experience these past few days much of it stemming from this project and the emotions that it is dredging up. These emotions around a performance of self-care revolve around the ethical concerns that I've been trying to answer in my larger practice as an artist-scholar: What does this project of self-care/art making DO for anyone? What does it mean for me to document and make this work available to others? Why does this matter to me, right now? In addition to these questions, I'm dealing with vulnerability on multiple levels: with myself and others. All this is new terrain for me and it is exhausting me emotionally and mentally as well as leaving me a little raw/overexposed.

So today I woke up. Exhausted and expecting that I might just pull an insular move: take a bath after class and enjoy time away from others. In truth I had expected much of this self-care performance work to include personal and individual acts of attention to and for myself; but I'm realizing two things thus far: 1.) self-care is exhausting and perhaps this is because it makes apparent the many of the ways that we/I haven't been attending to ourselves/myself; 2.) Self-care does involve others--that others are vital in our ability to stay grounded, connected and energized.

Today I learned how important showing up and being present with others can be an act of self-love/care. I was invited by my friend Jody to the open house for the Broadway Youth Center (BYC) a program of Howard Brown and their community partners that offers a variety of services to youth between the ages of 12-24, including a safe space for young people experiencing homelessness. I had never been to BYC before and after a day of class, running around, and reading/preparing to write essays/papers/etc. I rode the train down to BYC eager to get in and leave; to "show up" (for this project) and then go to home to be alone and really decompress/care for myself. Instead of dipping in and out, I got totally and deliciously caught up in the amazing people and work being produced by this grassroots organization. In talking with staff members at BYC we connected on the center's outreach programs, available resources, the lives and interests of the staff and students, as well as  why self-care is a critical and necessary practice for those doing social justice work: we tend to others but don't nourish ourselves. This raises the question (and one of my fundamental believes/why I'm doing this project): How do we expect this work and life to be sustainable when we fail to attend to ourselves?

I showed up, begrudgingly and left feeling energized beyond what I thought was available to me in this moment. Grateful to have met wonderful organizers doing work they love. Grateful to talk about the importance of self-care with others and to realize that none of us knows how to necessarily "do it" but all of us know that we need it, desperately. 

In my excitement I failed to take a picture at the event. But here's the nifty flyer!
Yes, I said "nifty."