Abstract:
Radical self-care is a self-care model that centers the health, wellness, and communal care of Black women. Radical self-care is rooted in self-determination, self-preservation, and self-restoration that nurtures the experiences of Black women. The theoretical lenses put forth in this paper show how interconnected COVID-19, Blackness, and Black womanhood in social work are all salient identities and experiences in need of radical self-care. Embedding radical self-care in the social work discourse is needed as it provides a method to broaden the well-being and retention of Black women social workers. It is imperative that social work organizations look at their policies and practices surrounding supporting self-care practices of Black women social workers as they are coping with racial trauma and navigating systems of oppression. In this paper I postulate how Black women social workers can take charge and ownership of their self-care needs and instill radical self-care practices in their marginalized clients through the proposed intervention of green therapy.
