Taking Care Amid the Chaos: An Introduction

Breathe in… Breathe out…

Family Separation And ‘Zero Tolerance’ At The Border

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Police officer charged in fatal shooting of unarmed teen Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh.

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Supreme Court Upholds Travel Ban. Supreme Court Sides With Anti-Gay Baker.

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Warplanes bomb 3 hospitals in southern Syria as Assad’s army presses offensive.

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Satellite images show North Korea upgrading nuclear facility.

Are you stressed yet? Are you feeling helpless? Are you scared? Me too – and these are just headlines from the past week. How can we breathe at a time like this?

If we’re on social media or paying attention to the news, we’re not only bombarded by headlines like this but also by the constant inundation of updates from people we know — and people we don’t. On a daily basis, I check my Facebook for family updates, my Instagram for how beautiful everyone’s life looks (#filters), my LinkedIn for networking connections with people I’ve never met, and my Twitter feed for a mix of hot takes – smart and otherwise – on the day’s top news. I check various news sites for the longer “think pieces”, and then I commiserate with my roommate about how we are collectively digging ourselves into a hole of resentment and polarization as a country from which we may never recover. And… repeat. Healthy, right?

But in all seriousness, we are living in a crazy time. We are living in a time of war and terror and polarization and fear. We are also living in a time of great connection, resistance, reckoning and bravery, and I will also say that I am very privileged to be experiencing most of this from the comfort of my couch – afraid but still safe. It can all get overwhelming, and a natural response to being overwhelmed is to feel paralyzed. There’s too much to do, so I won’t do anything. Sometimes it leads to resignation. I can’t make a big enough difference, so I’m just not going to try. Sometimes it leads to apathy. They don’t care about us, so why should I care about them.

What do we do to keep from becoming paralyzed, resigned, and apathetic about not only the state of the world or our country in general, but about the people around us – our communities and our neighbors? How do we keep from becoming helpless, resentful, and polarizing?

We have to take care of ourselves – mind, body, and soul. We have to breathe through it. We have to remind each other to breathe. We have to eat vegetables when we can and chocolate when we need a pick me up. We have to read the news, but we also have to put it down. We cannot know everything. We cannot fix everything. We have to find Netflix shows to binge-watch for a brain break and places to sit outside and remind ourselves of necessity of sunlight. We have to find good books to read on nights alone and good friends to laugh with when we need one another.

Whatever your political party, your cultural background or your religious beliefs, we all need to find a way to resist a world that tears us down with constant fearmongering, hopelessness, and comparison. We all need to find ways to restore, relax, and sit in peace. As Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

This week, we are starting a new series on self-care, where we will share strategies for remaining whole, resilient, and hopeful in the midst of chaos and stress. We hope you join us on this journey, as it is truly a journey for us as well. For those of us committed to celebrating diversity and fostering inclusion, the world is tough right now, but before we can assist others, we have to put our own oxygen masks on first.

Breathe in… Breathe out…