🔼: ###### 🔑 There is no such thing as Self-Care Many of us feel we're unable to take care of ourselves because we weren't given good-enough care when we were younger. But there's a reason striving to be independent often goes nowhere, and it's actually normal to feel like we're not able to fully take care of ourselves – because we can't. [[✍️ We live in a traumatized world]], which gave birth to a society which deludes us into believing in independence. But there is no such thing as independence, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, or self-care. We are **wholly** [[💡 Interdependence|Interdependent]]. Our well-being is inseparably tied to the well being of others. Everyone needs and deserves care, and we can only get it from other people, other beings, and the planet who all need caring for in turn. No one can go it alone, but our [[💡 Interdependence]] is often hidden by a fragmented socioeconomic structure. Most of our relationships are transactional and appear one-sided, but it's an illusion. Even if we walk into a store all by ourselves, pick items off a shelf, and then pay for it with our own money, we *still* depend on countless others. We're just given no knowledge of all the people behind much of any of it. Not even the roads we didn't pave or the car we didn't design or build. We're being cared for without getting to see where that care actually comes from. Care without [[☀️ Connection]] *feels* like self-care and often turns into empty consumerism. But there's a reason the things we own hold more meaning when someone gifts them to us or makes them for us, or when we buy it directly from the person who made it. Today, the people who make our stuff are kept out of sight. Not only does it hide poor working conditions, it also stops us from getting to feel and express our [[🕯️ Gratitude]] to the people we depend on. I can't think of anything I can do that wasn't somehow enabled by someone else. As I write on my laptop, I depend on an incalculable number of engineers, programmers, truck drivers, miners, factory workers, farmers, and plenty of others I could never think to think of. I couldn't make a single screw out of the thousands holding all my stuff together. To think, I borrow [[💡 Language|Language]] from ancestors whose names I will never know. To [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘|🕯️ meditate]], I rely on those who taught me how. By extension, I depend on all the people they have ever depended on. I don't even know how to make toothpaste, a bed, blanket, or pillow. I couldn't have built my home, made my clothes, or grown my tea, or made the mug I drink it from. But it's more than objects. When I sleep, I trust and depend on people to create enough safety to allow it. I depend on the sun to make the earth habitable, the planet to produce the food and water that nourishes me. I depend on my gut microbiome to help me get that nourishment. Our traumatized world makes it difficult to realize that all care is [[⭐️ Community Care]]. Without [[☀️ Connection]] to other humans and to the earth, we still *feel* alone. But it's not true. It might take time and practice to get comfortable with the idea of being cared for by safe others, but [[⭐️ Self-Care|Self-Care]], even as a concept, doesn't exist (at all) in many collectivist [[⭐️ Community|Communities]]. We are not a burden. We are not too much. Being "needy" is not a bad thing. We're okay. We belong. <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_CZEEYMXr8Q?feature=oembed" height="113" width="200" style="aspect-ratio: 1.76991 / 1; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe> [[✍️ The Myth of Self-Reliance]] [^1]: