Self-Care is a Privilege that Not Everyone Gets

I practice self-care every day. Not everyone is so lucky.

I talk a lot about self-care in my articles. I’m a very big fan of performing self-care whenever possible — whether it’s practicing a hobby, taking a walk, or just relaxing on the couch with a video game. I just got back from a couple of days away in a nice hotel room, where my partner and I got to relax and pamper ourselves.

I’ve also talked about the types of self-care that you can do — active self-care, like eating well and exercising, as opposed to passive self-care, like eating sweets and laying around all day. Generally, it’s better to do active self-care regularly, since it helps maintain your mental and physical health better than more passive self-care.

Doing active self-care takes a little bit of energy, though, so it can be hard to do when you’re particularly depressed or otherwise struggling. Motivating yourself to cook a healthy meal when you barely have the energy to get out of bed can seem like a challenge.

That said, I’ve even talked about ways to make self-care more fun and easy for yourself. Finding small things you can do that will help keep your mental and physical health up can have a huge effect on your overall well-being.

One of the things that I don’t talk much about, however, is how self-care relates to privilege. I wrote an article back in June about how I’ve never been poor in my life, and how a person goes shopping at the grocery store can give you a glimpse into their life. You can read it here:

Ever since I graduated college, I’ve never been forced to work more than five days a week. Even when I had two jobs, I had the luxury of getting the same two days off every week — Wednesday and Thursday, two days in a row! Between my income and my living arrangements, I only had to work on those days if I wanted to.

As such, I’ve always been able to do self-care activities on my weekends. Work was stressful, sure — whether it was the deadlines from my grant writing job or the physical labor of my grocery store job, I didn’t have it easy. However, I had the benefit of a steady weekend and resources to practice self-care.

Not everyone is so lucky.

Having spent ten years working retail jobs before becoming a full-time office worker, I’ve encountered quite a few people who didn’t have the luxury of self-care. I remember talking to a coworker at my grocery store job about her life. She casually talked about how she had three jobs, including one as a bank teller, and basically never got a day off, never mind an actual weekend. I remember her smiling as she said this, but her smile seemed hollow, and I remember noticing how tired she looked. I was in my early 20s at the time, but it stuck with me.

I’ve encountered this time and again in my life. Restaurant staff, retail employees, bartenders, even a lot of office workers, none of whom could afford to do proper self-care. A few years ago, I had an acquaintance who worked an office job at Wells Fargo as an accountant of some sort. One day, he seemed particularly tired, so I asked him about it. It turned out that he had been forced to start working at Amazon to make ends meet so he could support his family.

At that point, his typical day involved driving across town to the Amazon warehouse at 1:00 a.m., working until 5:00 a.m., driving back across town to the Wells Fargo complex, showering at the gym there, and starting his office job. He’d been doing this for a few weeks when I asked him about it; not long after, we fell out of contact and I haven’t seen him since. I hope he’s okay.

Self-care is an important part of keeping yourself mentally and physically healthy. It’s also a privilege that many people do not get. It is not uncommon for someone to work two jobs for 60 hours a week, getting a day off occasionally if at all, and still only barely having the resources to get by. I’ve come to know quite a few people like that in my life.

As much as I write about self-care and my mental health journey, I also understand that I am writing from a place of privilege. I have an office job that affords me the ability to work 40 hours a week from home and pays me enough to support myself, my partner, and my cats, all while owning a house and taking periodic vacations.

Lots of people don’t have any of those luxuries. For many, vacations are things that happen to other people. Owning a house is outside of the realm of what’s possible. Working 40 hours a week means not putting food on the table, and having a day off means the bills don’t get paid.

So, when I talk about things like eating well, that’s something that I get to do that many don’t. Fruits and veggies cost a lot of money, but processed foods are cheap and filling. Taking a walk around the block every day for exercise is laughable when you spend 12 hours on your feet every day. Hobbies cost money and take time, both of which are in short supply for many.

I don’t have a good solution for this. Anyone who follows me knows that I am big on social justice, and I do believe that things like a higher minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, and more worker protections like government-guaranteed vacation time and maternity/paternity leave will help.

Those are long-term solutions, though, and people are living through this right now. For that, I have no solutions. Most of my self-care advice doesn’t apply here. I have lived with the privilege of self-care for so long that I don’t know what it’s like to not have it.

So, if you are like me and have luxuries like “savings” and “paid time off,” take a minute to remind yourself how lucky you are. You may have worked hard to earn those privileges, and for that I congratulate you, but you should also remember that, unless you are a billionaire, everyone in America is about one bad month away from total ruin.

And, if you are in a position where you can’t practice self-care as I do for whatever reason, I stand in awe of your strength. Do what you can to care for yourself and your family, and feel free to flip me the bird whenever I preach about exercise and eating well.

It is the job of those of us with privilege to create a more equitable and just world for everyone. My privilege which affords me the ability to practice the self-care that I need should be extended to everyone, and it is my duty to make that so.

The next time you’re spending your vacation time relaxing on a beach somewhere, reading a book and drinking a mojito, take a minute to thank your lucky stars that you have the privilege to do so. Not everyone is so lucky.

If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!

Here are some other things I’ve written: