Introducing Recharge, a Pay Up series on self-care
By Julia Carpenter and Alex Laughlin
The election is stressful. The holidays are stressful. Work is stressful. And being a woman? Super stressful.
And in Pay Up, our Slack community dedicated to fostering conversations about the gender wage gap, we spend a lot of time talking about how to combat this stress. Bubble baths, long runs, Netflix binges — these aren’t “guilty pleasures” as much as necessary maintenance for today’s working woman.
As one Pay Up member put it, “Basically, I went from thinking self-care was a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must’ — and that changed everything.”
Living and working as a woman or a minority (or both) is hard enough as it is. According to the National Institute of Health, while about 18 percent of all adults experience any mental illness, women are 60 percent more likely than men to experience anxiety and twice as likely to experience “major depression.” Whether you already live with mental illness, or you’re finding yourself increasingly stressed out by work, the holidays, and the political climate, a little bit of self care can do wonders for fortifying you for the challenges ahead.
As feminist writer Audre Lorde says, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
A single woman can’t close the gender wage gap, and one person alone can’t eradicate systemic prejudice — but dammit, you can treat the symptoms of the disease, sometimes. One bath bomb really can change your world, at least for an hour.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing Pay Up members’ suggestions for how to incorporate self-care into your everyday routine. Whether it’s something small (a free meditation app on your phone) or something big (a long trip with your friends) we’ll be talking about how to appreciate these things and make room for them in your life.
Some thoughts from Pay Up members on why they practice self-care:
Sharona: Choosing self-care is not a zero-sum game a la “I spend time on this or I spend time on other things”. It is very much an investment in your ability to do MORE of the “other things” later. And one way I look at it, plus hobbies and life overall, is — “if not now, WHEN?” — why I finally got the falconry permit in my late 30’s, picked up saxophone in my 40s, having a happy childhood a few decades late.
Nicte Trujillo: That people oversee mental health because we believe that what’s in our mind might not be real, but as Dumbledore said. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
I just wish people would see mental health as just another part of your health; like how you go to the doctor when an arm hurts and you go a specialist in that area, you have issues with your mind, you go to a specialist of that area!
Christine: I’ve only really been consciously practicing self-care for about a year because my physical health problems required it. Not only has it helped improve my physical symptoms, but my anxiety/panic attacks are completely gone, I can better recognize stress and can consciously work to calm myself down, and I feel that I’m so much better at saying “no” to things, which has helped me focus on doing things *I* need to do for me and the things/relationships that are important to me.
Tell us what self-care means to you! What do you do to unwind? How do you make time for relaxation? Leave us a note in the comments, and check back next week as we share our members’ suggestions and routines.
Pay Up is a private, Slack-based community dedicated to fostering conversations about the gender wage gap. It was formerly managed by the Washington Post.
