Sustaining people’s power through self and community care

Sustaining people’s power through self- and community care

Have you ever wondered how dead a plant looks after you cut it, and watched in amazement as each branch springs to new life? Until someone says that it’s really good for the plant, I hesitated to prune the plants.

As lad from Community that controlled by power of the Politicians. I learn that is only stone that can be trusted. As stone will never more its self. I thought you my family. I tell myself that I have brother from another mother. I invested my trust to you as my elder brother. Forgetting that even the image or the shadow of my body. During the night without moon refused to escort me. Can I call myself areal fool, no I refused to call myself that? As I never have a microscope that I should use to see what was inner in your mind. When you came to me, that day I know you true politician in the Community.

It goes against everything we think of as “healthy.” How can such trauma and stress help plants grow and even thrive? This is just a simple example of the struggle for survival in nature. Pruning plants and trees puts more energy into their growth. After being chopped to pieces, plants and trees might decide to give up and just shrivel up and die. But that is not the case. The same is true for us. When things get difficult, we can choose to give up, give up some more, suffer, or get better. We can follow nature’s lead and choose to face our problems instead of running away from them. We can choose to face stressors and use them to build our resilience and perhaps even grow from them.

One morning, during one of the most difficult times in my life, I was lying in bed, anxious about the future and thinking about the blessings this challenge would bring. I was reminded of a passage from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Use of Sorrow” Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took me years to realize it was also a gift. There was debris lying around, but I also had my son. My body was weakening me, but it also wanted me to remember to pay attention and take care of my health. My mental state was scary, but it was also an opportunity to give me courage. For a long time my life was dictated by others, by my parents, by my girlfriends, by my religion and social norms, but now I can make my own choices. This was my choice and I wanted to consciously make it. I had to make this decision because I knew that change is one of the only certainties in life. I wanted to be better and I knew I had to work harder to get there.

Self-care means doing what makes us feel good, increasing our emotional and physical stamina, improving our self-esteem, and building our resilience. Good self-care keeps us compassionate, passionate and engaged. It means doing important work in one area without sacrificing other areas of our lives. It means maintaining a positive attitude despite personal challenges and greater injustices in the world. Self-care activities improve our lives every day and have positive long-term effects. However, these activities are not always fun. Sometimes they even border on boredom.

In addition, the concept of self-care has been hijacked by corporations to create a profitable industrial wellness complex focused on beauty, happiness, and comfort in the name of self-love and self-compassion. In Western society, this is primarily targeted at white, affluent women, but it can affect anyone. The main goal of this industry is to sell goods and services that only superficially give the appearance of self-care, which in reality is often indulgent and frivolous, precisely because it is a temporary quick fix that only serves to make individuals feel better about themselves.

Ultimately, it was all the people in my life who had become my support system that helped me sort out this mess. These people were friends who became relatives; some of them were just strangers before we came into contact with each other. Eventually, this group of people became my formal “community care,” and they were exactly what I needed to fulfill my obligations to myself.

My friend Nhlamulo helped me come to this realization one day when I was venting to him about how I had no time or energy left at the end of each night to do even one thing on the list. He asked me a simple, direct question, “What do you need to get one thing done right now?” This question gave me pause, because I couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked me what I needed. Nhlamulo, an environmentalist I had befriended for educational purposes, broke my stunned silence and asked again, “What do you need right now to accomplish one thing on your list on a regular basis? Be specific.”

“I need more time in the morning. Then I would have time to do meditation, exercise, study or even plan my meals,” I replied. “Great. That’s perfect.” Nhlamulo started moving, as he usually did. He told me not to worry, that he would take care of everything.

After this intervention by Nhlamulo Ntsan’wisi , I spent one of my precious hours thinking about my self-care list again. I rewrote the list, dedicating a separate page to each self-care category. On each page, I created three columns; in one column I listed each activity in that category, and in the second column I wrote down obstacles. I identified every shoe and piece of clutter in my cubbyholes. I asked myself what prevented me from participating in each activity and wrote down things like time, finances, and skills. In the third column, I considered how I could remove these obstacles by listing things that either I could do myself or that someone else could do for me.

During this process, I realized three important things: first, I realized that I needed the support of a friend or community to remove many of these obstacles. Second, I understood that there were areas of self-care where I was actually the only obstacle, as they involved issues such as motivation, discipline, and self-esteem, to name a few. By taking a realistic look at myself, I realized that I needed someone to hold me accountable when I was not holding myself accountable. Eventually, I realized that some of the items on my list were too ambitious and unrealistic given where I was at, and I gave myself permission to eliminate those items or adjust my plan over time. My self-care plan was not set in stone. It was a living, breathing document that would change over time as my life and needs changed. It was a document that depended on the support of an entire community.

Not only that, but soon I was helping all members of that community formulate their own self-care plans. Over time, we wove a mutually beneficial safety net of care and support that ensured we all got what we needed, that we could ask for help without guilt, that we could remove obstacles in our path to self-sustainability, and that we held each other accountable with love and goodwill. Ultimately, consistently standing up for ourselves lays the foundation for our life’s mission: standing up for others

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About the author:

Nyiko Lovemore Manganyi is a young man from the Limpopo province, whose passion for the public sector, and private sector has steered her towards active citizenship and being of service to others.

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