The road to change in our communities’ legal and cultural stance toward racism is a long one. For the past few days, we’ve paused all content in solidarity with the current outcry against racial injustice in our law enforcement and on.
Just as we have all recently learned in our collective experience with Covid-19, albeit in a different way, crisis or no, daily life treads on in some way, shape or form. The sun doesn’t stop rising. In some ways, when we’re in crisis, we wish it would. We wish that we could have a pause to deal with life’s hard, but necessary interruptions — sometimes the consistency of the earth’s rotation seems cruel when we’re in crisis, but we can also see it as a comfort if we choose to.
The reality is that we must learn how to create meaningful changes to protect our communities against injustice while we do business, tend to our families, survive all the other struggles of being human and take care of our own physical and emotional well-being. As a wellness site, one of our main concerns right now is how to help our community — especially people of color — deal with the trauma, heartbreak and emotional overwhelm at this time in our nation.
Our initial impulse and coping mechanisms often drive us to look away from our difficult feelings or funnel them into un-conscientious expressions — from addiction to violence to self-harm.
As we’ve all been echoing for months in our current state of quarantine, “There’s no one right way to feel right now.” There are a plethora of valid emotions — and they all play a deeply interconnected role in our overall health.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or traumatized right now — whether you’ve been in the chaos of protesting or directly affected by this week’s violence, whether you have been a victim of looting or are simply in grief over the magnitude and complexity of our nation’s racial issues, we humbly offer what simple tools we have — a collection of emotional health and self-care advice from our recent coverage and community of wellness pros for your health holistically right now.
Caring for our emotional health does not mean denying the root issues that brought us overwhelm or trauma in the first place, instead true self-care enables and strengthens us to fight life’s battles and live our truth.
We’ll share more in the coming weeks, however, these are the tools we have in pocket and we hope they help even just one person to heal their nervous system and tap into more self-love. Not all of these stories will speak to you, dig through and find a few tools that make sense for you individually. If something resonates with you, consider sharing it with a friend.
From Health Coach Koya Webb: A Toolkit For Dealing with Overwhelming Emotions + Changes
On Releasing Energy: Here’s How Our Energy System Becomes Overwhelmed
A Powerful Long-Term Wellness Practice: EFT Tapping Therapy To Deal With Trauma
Don’t Underestimate the Damage of Stress: The Problem With Emotional Stress + How To Manage It
Take care of you: 5 Exercises To Dramatically Uplevel Your Sense of Self-Worth
8 Ways to Support Yourself During Prolonged Stress
Advice from a Reiki Pro: Dance, Breathe, Remind Yourself
