Values-based Self-care: What We Learn from Racialized Activists’ Care Practices

To promote change, activists must first confront the suffering of their communities, but this process can weigh heavily on activists and contribute to burnout. While many activist organizations promote community care, their conceptualization of community wellness competes with the individual wellness promised by luxury self-care products, inaccessible to those facing financial barriers. The present study juxtaposes this buy-in model of self-care with a values-based model of self-care. Using participatory qualitative methods, we generated a grounded theory of how racialized activists develop their own care practices. Driven by a desire to live their values, participants developed their care practices in five stages: Developing Activist Values, Belonging, Participating in Community Care, Protective Self-Care, and Restorative Self-Care. By the end of the process, participants were sustaining long-term wellness strategies by exercising their values with the support of their community. The results present a values-based conceptualization of self-care that resists commodification by being grounded in community values and political defiance. The work discusses the implications of values-based self-care for conceptualizations of well-being, and directions for future research.