What Being an Advocate has taught me about Self-Care
I have never really thought of myself as an advocate. The word has always felt a bit grandiose to me, used to describe courageous, bold folks who are taking a stand for fierce change and radical movements. Advocacy is something that I’ve simply not recognized as being a skill-set in my personal wheelhouse.
It turns out I was wrong in this regard. I’m a total advocate, especially around issues that impact my loved ones.
In the past several months I have found myself immersed in advocacy roles related to a few key players in my life. While all of these individuals are doing well overall, they are also navigating challenging scenarios, and are in need of support. That’s where I have stepped in, helping them to push boundaries a bit, to vocalize concerns and to go to bat on their behalf against professionals who don’t seem willing to do more than the bare minimum -- or at least, not without a prompt from someone else (that’s me, the Prompter!).
While I’m starting to embrace my inner advocate, I’m also learning this: advocating for anything takes a lot of energy. Like, a LOT. This is something I had never really considered before -- the idea that there’s a link between the amount of energy we have and our capacity to advocate. And it has me thinking.
I see many folks around me who are feeling discouraged by the state of one thing or another. Whether it’s the politics of today, climate change issues, the state of disenfranchised demographics, the plight of shelter animals, or a myriad of other concerns, there are many issues around which I see folks wanting to rally. And while such rallies are, in fact, happening to some degree, in many ways they’re not happening as profoundly or as effectively as is needed.
And I believe this has to do with our collective degree of fatigue.\
Some would argue that the lack of advocacy is due to apathy. I tend to agree. And at the same time, I am realizing that apathy itself is rooted in an overwhelming fatigue and lack of energy in our greater society collective.
As a society, we are tired.
So, I want to invite each of to take a moment and breathe deeply. Inhale and exhale, not once, not twice, but several times, clearing our brains and bodies of energetic cobwebs. That’s a start to re-energizing in this moment.
And then, going forward, I want to challenge you to do better at taking care of you. Nourish yourself, mindfully. Eat healthful foods more often than not. Exercise; move your body. And for goodness’s sake, start resting. Get enough sleep. Shut your electronics off. Set boundaries around email and screen time. Go home at the end of your work day, rather than staying to finish or fix “just one more thing.” Trust me, that thing can wait, more often than not. And if you allow it to wait, it might even get resolved on its own, or at least get resolved from a fresh perspective.
If each of us can put just a bit more energy into the land of genuine self-care, then maybe, collectively, we can find the energy to advocate for the things that truly matter, whatever those might be. The things that matter may be global in nature; or they might be at work; or they might be at home. Whatever they are or wherever they exist, such issues will not get the attention they need if we are too tired to put our focus there.
Bottom-line: advocacy is energy-consuming, tiring work. And it’s necessary. It’s time for each and every one of us to do the inner work of restoring our energy individually, so that we can do the collective, outer work of advocating when and where it’s needed.