Sustaining spirit : self-care for social justice
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references.

Naomi Ortiz offers powerful, thoughtful, transformative insight into self-care. She weaves together personal experiences in class, race and disability advocacy into informative advice on dealing with the risks of burnout.

"In this book, I write about self-care as spiritual work which combines care of body, spirit, mind with being aware of our reality. When we do this, in connection with emotional, nourishing and transformative experiences, we will create an opportunity to be rooted to ourselves, to place and to practice self-care. Self-care strategies in this book include becoming aware of what you think / feel in the moment, honoring what you need, and drawing nourishment from place. This book also provides specific tools geared to social justice activities. These tools cover areas such as self-care while engaging in advocacy, honoring transitions, and integrating simple sources of pleasure. Yet information is not transformation. Rooting to self-care means doing our own work of considering and exploring questions. We each need different kinds of tools to help us on our journey. Much of my journey in this book is in asking and exploring the deeper questions tied to self-care. At the end of almost every chapter, there are reflection questions to help deepen our skills. I offer a place to start, to grow your roots. Self-care is in itself an act of social change that is urgently needed as a foundation for everything else we hope to create. By taking care of ourselves, we can respond to people and situations from a deeper, more centered place, therefore impacting and encouraging others to do the same. Part of self-care is really about deepening our relationship with our own value. Activists can place their entire worth on what they are doing, what change they want to see in the world. This focus holds activists in an emotional stasis between working for change and holding hope for that change to occur. This stillness is where we must attend to ourselves. Holding hope for change gives us our greatest gift. We care. We care deeply. Self-care generates our capacity to grow roots and draw up nourishment for the journey."--taken from Rooting to Self-Care, page 14.