April 13, 2020

Self-care in the time of COVID-19

Mental Health from a Disability Studies, Asian American Studies, and Arts Approach

As you may know, I’m the Scholar/Artist/Activist in Residence in the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown this year, and my work is on mental health from a disability studies, Asian American studies, and arts+humanities perspective. I work with scholars, artists, writers, and practitioners to develop formally and theoretically innovative mental health tools. In my classroom, I regularly use critical arts work to get students to think and feel and do and be differently, interrogating normative ideas of wellness, strength, and productivity, as well as of vulnerability and needs. And I ask students to do a lot of self-reflection as critical self-care, using individual and group activities developed from the interactive mental health project I created, Open in Emergency.

Since I can't be on campus to share my work with the larger campus community right now, I thought it might be helpful to share some of it digitally. For the next few weeks, I will post short, weekly self-care prompts to introduce possible structures of care in a time when many of us are struggling under the weight of unbelievable stress and anxiety and fear and grief.

I read somewhere recently that we shouldn't be trying to apply individual solutions to a structural problem, referring to the issue of forced homeschooling that parents are facing during social distancing--but this applies more broadly to how we should think about mental health, too. And so the prompts I'm providing may seem like individual self-care activities but they try to engage both the individual and the structural as much as possible under the circumstances, and while limited, I hope they help you and your loved ones during this time and in whatever future that is in store for all of us. To paraphrase disabled writer and artist Johanna Hedva: care for ourselves and for others is, perhaps even more clearly now, the most revolutionary thing we can do.

Open in Emergency Self-Care Prompt #1

Here are three cards from the Asian American Tarot, an original set of tarot cards I curated to capture the contours of Asian American life—and the knowledges that life produces. I chose these cards—The Student, The Emergency, The Crip (art by Matt Huynh, text by various writers)—because they seem particularly relevant to this moment.

For each card, look at the image and read the text. Think about what resonates with you right now and how the card directs you to think and feel differently than you have before. As you go about the rest of your day and week, think about how the card(s) shift how you move through your day and week.

[Click here for image descriptions and screen-readable text]

FYI, The Student is synthesized from a series of student responses culled from my visits to college campuses across the country over the last 3+ years, shaped by a team of student editors.

I've assigned these 3 cards to my current students in Intro to Disability Studies as well. My students also have digital access to the rest of the 30-card deck and will be doing tarot readings for themselves and loved ones. AALR will be making digitals of the full deck available as a free community resource during this time—keep an eye out on our social media.

With care,

mimi

NEXT: Intentional vulnerability