Friday Care Package: Intention as Care for the Sacred Self
Nurturing wild ecologies of care, starting with ourselves
Friday Care Package: Intention as Care for the Sacred Self
For the past nine months, I’ve been writing on care every Friday. I’ve drawn on scholars, poets, and visionaries who dream a world full of care, because I myself am in need of it. Today, I turn toward care of the self and self-compassion, because that is what I am most in need of right now. I wonder if you are, too?
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
— James Baldwin
“Care is the antidote to violence.”
— Saidiya Hartman
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
— Audre Lorde
Dear Becoming Ones,
This week I am returning to a question I carried into the morning: How does one live with intention in a world where change is the only constant? But I want to take it deeper with you, toward care and compassion—for the self, for the sacred text that is our own lived body, our own story.
Our lives are not marginal footnotes to history. They are the text itself. The cracks and ruptures, the tenderness and persistence, the mornings when we rise again—this is the scripture of our existence. To live with intention is to honor that sacred text with care.
The Nap Ministry reminds us: rest is resistance. In a culture that demands productivity at the expense of our humanity, choosing to rest is a radical act of self-compassion. It is a way of telling ourselves: I am worth care. My body, my story, my life are worth tending.
Scholars and practitioners of care have given us many tools to sustain this tending:
Physical care: nourishing food, embodied movement, medical attention, rest.
Emotional care: therapy, honest friendship, journaling, letting ourselves weep and laugh.
Intellectual care: reading, studying, engaging imagination, allowing curiosity.
Spiritual care: prayer, meditation, ritual, community worship, art as devotion.
Relational care: cultivating trust, practicing honesty, creating boundaries.
Ecological care: walking in nature, gardening, remembering our kinship with earth.
Together, these practices form a care plan—a living liturgy—that honors the sacredness of the self.
James Baldwin might say to us here what he always pressed upon us: face what is. He insisted that “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” But to face the self with compassion, not condemnation, is also the beginning of freedom. Facing ourselves means tending the wounds we carry, not ignoring them.
Saidiya Hartman, in her writing on wayward lives, shows us how Black women crafted small practices of refusal, joy, and care against crushing systems. She teaches us that imagination itself is a tool of survival—a way of inhabiting worlds otherwise. Perhaps imagination is one of the most profound forms of self-care: to imagine a self who is whole, beloved, free. To imagine a future where our bodies are not sites of extraction but vessels of joy.
So today I ask: how will you read the sacred text of your own life? What care notes will you scribble in the margins? How will you honor the fragile and resilient pages of your story?
Because living intentionally begins here—not in grand gestures, but in faithful, tender care of the one life entrusted to you.
✨ Ritual Exhale:
Take one hand to your chest, one to your belly. Inhale slowly, whispering “I am a sacred text.” Exhale fully, whispering “I choose care.”
🔎 Reflection Questions:
What small act of care can I offer myself today as resistance?
How might I treat my lived experience as sacred, as worthy of reverence?
Which form of care—physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, relational, or ecological—needs my attention this week?
How might imagination become part of my care practice?
📚 Resources for the Journey:
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time — on facing ourselves with honesty and love.
The Nap Ministry (Tricia Hersey), Rest Is Resistance — on rest as a form of care and refusal.
bell hooks, All About Love — on love as daily practice and a wellspring of care.
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments — on the radical imagination and small acts of refusal as care.
Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light — on self-care as “an act of political warfare.”
And let me leave you with Baldwin, who insisted that living well is not an accident but an intention:
“The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now. And one must accept this, in one’s bones, that this is where one is.”
May we face ourselves with compassion, live as if our lives are sacred text, and care for that text as if the world depends on it—because it does.Our Collective Becoming is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.