If you are here, it means that you likely identify as a BIPOC or LGBTQ+ healer or caretaker, and are along the journey of self care!
How did Cuidate Co. get its start? Well, first it was for an event that I had to come up with a name so that I could vend with another person!However the products that we sold all had to do with self care, soap, soap holders, oils, full moon boxes.
From there the idea of Cuidate Co grew from a name alone to a grouping of people who all have been professional helpers, who are BIPOC, and most who are LGBTQ.
We started this collective because when many of us started working in social work, self care was a one off professional development, not part of a culture for the organization or the individuals. If you felt burnt out, someone might say – well, maybe you should stop working here – rather than inquiring about what could be leading to burnout, or recommending self care strategies. The truth is that person had no self care strategies themselves. Why? Because the generation before that was even less encouraged to be in touch with their body and feelings, and much more in touch with grind and work culture, as well as anti oppression elitism.
For all of us in Cuidate Co we came from our own histories of trauma, generational and interpersonal – these traumas led us to work in helping fields, unfortunately no one in those fields was consciously practicing self care or community care, and many other folks had similar histories, so sharing information or asking for help as trauma survivors who are usually hyper independent was not a common practice.
So Cuidate Co was born officially during the pandemic, a time where so many of us had no choice but to be alone, to the point where i think some of us began to reach out more than we ever had.
We share because no one shared with us, we share because sharing with our community and our upcoming helpers is so important to decrease the impact of work on our beings, and even decrease the need to access medical and mental health support because we are more in touch with our needs, and also in touch with the roots of why it was hard to honor our needs in the first place. We also believe very much in being in touch with not just our generational traumas, but also our generational gifts.
Sometimes this means coming up with a self care routine, attending a group event, and sometimes this does mean leaving your work – because your work is not accommodating in terms of self care practices, and does not honor your boundaries.
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