A Women’s Center blog post by staff member Daniel Willey 

Note: I hope what I’ve learned can be applicable to other people, but I know my experience isn’t universal. I use a lot of action verbs in my post, but I don’t intend to make assumptions about what a body can do. I encourage readers to challenge their ideas of how one might “feel” and “wiggle” and “tend” and “look” and “know” in different ways, and how you as an individual do these things in a way that is unique to you and your body.

This is a twelve-step program designed to teach you how to be tender to yourself.

1. Have a Major Body Event.

Have surgery. Be or become disabled. Learn to use new assistive technology. Get fitted for a prosthetic. Gain weight. Lose weight. Start a health challenge. Buy new clothes. Get new hair. Have a child. Age.

2. Lose your body.

What is your body? What does your body mean now? What did it mean before? Is it different? How is it different? Why? Is this still you? Where are you?

3. Recognize your new body.

This is your body. Look at it. What do you see? Locate yourself. Are you in your thighs? Are you in your shoulders? Where are you? You are here.

4. Know that this will be hard.

How does your body challenge you? What about your body makes it hard to be tender? Hold these things in your hands and know this will be hard. Take a deep breath.

5. Begin to unlearn.

“To be alive in this world at all: indeed to be queer, a person of color, a person with a disability, trans, a woman or poor, is to have self-hatred non-consensually woven into your education in personhood before you’re even aware the air you are breathing.” –Lila (for Autostraddle)

“Your education in personhood” is fraught. What has the world taught you about your body? Why? Where did you learn these things?

6. Begin your affirmations.

“All bodies are good bodies.” What can your body do? What can your body not do? What does your body do differently? Your body is a good body. Revel in this.

7. Allow yourself to be angry (upset, frustrated, sad).

Let the heat fill you up from your toes and let it tingle on your skin. Draw out all the ill feelings and let them swim in your anger (sadness, frustration). Know these feelings. Take a deep breath and push them out of your lungs and your eyes and your nose and your fingers and your knees and the top of your head. Acknowledge them as they leave.

8. Fill the empty spaces.

Where did your ill feelings live? What do their empty homes look like? Tuck forgiveness in your belly. Fill your back with strength. Dab pride behind your ears.

9. Know that this will be hard.

“Your education in personhood” is woven into your roots and your ill feelings have grown roots too. It will take time to make them leave. Some never will.

10. Tend ill feeling weeds.

Get to know your weeds. If you can’t make them leave, learn where their roots go. What do the weeds look like? How do they smell? Are you irritated by thorns or stray root hairs? Soothe with aloe. Remind your weeds: “You are a visitor here. I own my body.” Accept your weeds. Know they are with you but they are not you. Accept your weeds. Be tender where they grow.

11. Touch your body.

Feel how soft your earlobes are. Delight in the bumps and the lumps and the humps. Wiggle your toes if you can. Stretch and feel your body expand. Take up space! Oh it feels good to be a body! Drink cool water on a hot day. Take a hot shower on a cold morning. Revel in sensation.

12. Repeat.

Your body will change over and over again. Excite in this. Know it will be hard every time. Know it can get easier. Take someone with you next time. Be a good body with another good body. Find joy in exuding love outward and pouring love inward. Know love does not mean always loving, always delighting. Know love means patience. Love is sometimes found a little deeper than you would like. Your body is a good body. Revel in this.

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13. Know that everything in your life will work against you on this journey.

via robot-hugs.com.com/under-2

I recently had top surgery….

….it was really hard to make myself rest. Don’t let this photo fool you. I was full of pain meds at the time.

These twelve steps take a lot of energy. As students, workers, homemakers, parents living in a world that praises us for pushing ourselves to the limit, setting aside time and energy to care for ourselves can be a radical act. We talk about self-care and self-love all the time in the Women’s Center and as feminists because prioritizing oneself requires so much unlearning.

Mothers are expected to be Super Mom — PTA, soccer, bake sale, appointments, dinner, laundry, carpool, work, school — and be totally selfless about it. Women who set aside time to take care of themselves are “high maintenance.” Companies like Dove use self-love and body positivity to market their products while profiting from self-hate by selling skin-whitening products. Even much of the body positivity movement expects you to love yourself all the time as if you haven’t been born into a society that feeds off your insecurity.

As a student at UMBC, I am having to make the difficult decision between keeping a pretty big scholarship and maintaining my mental and physical health. It’s taken me a year to get to this point, but I’m finally choosing myself. So many people have suggested I “just try harder” and “quit everything but school,” but very few have acknowledged the strength it takes to say “I matter. My health and wellbeing are my priority.”

Though UMBC resources like the Counseling Center, UMBC NAMI, UHS, and Retriever Wellness take steps to help students manage stress and mental health, there’s still much to be done. Academic rigor and attitudes about academic success can create a toxic climate for students and often our resources are funneled into praising students who do well rather than helping and uplifting students who need help.

Even as feminists who firmly believe in treating ourselves, it can be so hard to say “no” when it feels like you’re the only one who will say “yes.” Burnout is a big issue in social justice work not only because it is so emotionally taxing, but also because we who do the work feel like we need to be doing all the work all the time. This comic does a great job of talking about how we as activists can better manage our projects and priorities.

It’s also important to remember that self-care can be a privilege. Single mothers, Black folks, people on welfare or food stamps, and many others are expected to not engage in self-care or self-love as if doing so is a sign of incompetence or laziness. It is becoming increasingly more clear the traumatic effect racism has on people of color in the U.S. and it’s statistically proven that people in poverty experience consistently higher levels of stress. As Audre Lorde said, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” As a queer Black woman and a mother, caring for herself was a radical act of resistance.

Don’t forget to check out the Women’s Center’s Self-Care Day event at the end of each semester and these related Women’s Center blog posts!

A blog reflection written by Women’s Center student staff member Meagé Clements. This post is an expansion of her statement in the UMBC Women’s Center and Women of Color Coalition’s “I’m Not” anti-stereotype campaign for the Telling Our Stories project, which we posted about here.

It’s been over a year since I first read recent UMBC alumna and former Women’s Center student staff member Bria Hamlet’s blog post Blackish: Telling My Story and her words continue to resonate with me. She described how she often felt that her blackness was invalidated by others because she didn’t fit the “stereotypical Black mold.” Her blog post made me recall my own experiences with microaggressions and respectability politics, even before I had words to describe what I was facing.

Upon thinking about my “favorite” microaggressions to include on my anti-stereotype poster for the Telling Our Stories Project, a million ideas popped in my head; several about my name, a few about my natural hair, but most were about me being — or not being — “Black enough,” and how other people often take it upon themselves to decide when I am capable of being associated with my blackness.

Growing up, I attended predominantly white schools, but I had always surrounded myself with a small yet diverse group of friends. I remember several times when my Black and non-Black friends alike would joke about how my “Black card should be revoked” or how I was “barely Black” for any number of reasons.

Most often, it came down to the fact that by being an introvert, I couldn’t possibly be Black. Because I wasn’t the stereotypical “loud Black woman,” I wasn’t Black enough. Because I grew up in a two-parent household, I couldn’t be Black. Because I “spoke like a white girl,” I wasn’t deemed Black enough.

Since when did each of these things become associated with Blackness and why were they the determinants? What exactly did it mean to be “Black enough?”

Due to stereotypes associated with being Black, people often assume that there is a singular Black experience and that there is a set of definitive criteria to test one’s blackness. If someone doesn’t appear to conform to X,Y, and Z, they are deemed less Black. At the same time, it seems as if people regard stereotypical white traits as “good,” and stereotypical Black traits as “bad,” which further perpetuates harmful dichotomies.

Consequently, Black people become torn between the societal pressures to assimilate to “mainstream” culture and the pressures to embrace their cultures and express themselves freely. My grandparents are Black, my parents are Black, and I have always identified as Black, too. Yet as I grew up, I found myself constantly attempting to “prove” my blackness in one way or another.

My name is Meagé and I’m not “barely Black.”

However, I soon realized that this was useless. Living in a society where appearance and first impressions are so influential, I learned that no matter how I act, I am always going to be Black and I am going to continue to experience the discrimination associated with being a Black woman. Whether I “speak like a white girl” or not, my voice coming from my body is still subject to scrutiny. I am going to continue to experience discrimination because of my “Black-sounding” name, and, regardless, I am going to continue to embrace being a Black woman.

Most importantly, I learned that no one is capable of defining me but myself. I’ve always been Black, I’ve had the experiences of a Black woman and I have nothing to prove. People need to recognize the diversity that exists among Black women. We have different skin tones, talents, quirks and, most importantly, we have different personalities and traits that make us unique. Instead of policing Black women and attempting to define their blackness with a finite set of traits, we should “celebrate the fullness of Black womanhood” and realize that we are more than the media misrepresentations, the stereotypes, and the assumptions.  

To talk more about this topic and other issues impacting women of color, Women of Color Coalition meets weekly on Tuesdays at 5pm. This Women’s Center discussion-based program is open to all self-identified women of color in the UMBC community. 

A playlist brought to you by Women’s Center staff member, MJ Jalloh Jamboria

As we approach the end of Women’s History Month, I wanted to share a playlist I made for a Women’s History Month Empowerment Program. The playlist features some throwbacks, a few current jams, Beyoncé (more than once) and I throw in Kelis’ “Milkshake” just for fun!

Get up and dance like this kid

Check it out on Spotify or YouTube below!

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.