Wellness and Self-Care for the Holiday Weekend

Created and curated by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association

As we go into this holiday weekend, we hope that all of you can take some time to relax and check in with yourself. We have made a few updates to this resource list we previously sent around and encourage all of you to recharge and take care of yourselves in the coming days, so that you can head into next week ready to carry on the fight for racial justice.

What to Watch & Listen to This Weekend:

Many streaming platforms have collected anti-racism movies on dedicated channels:

• Netflix Black Lives Matter Collection (Ava DuVernay’s Documentary on Netflix 13TH is still free to stream)
• Amazon Prime Amplify Black Voices Collection
• ‘1619,’ a Podcast From The New York Times: An audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.

PBS has a variety of specials and resources online:

• Watch – Great Performances: Marc Levin’s film adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith’s play “Twilight: Los Angeles”
• Watch – PBS NewsHour Special: Race Matters: America in Crisis (June 3, 2020).
• Read – Isabella Isaacs-Thomas, What to read, listen to and watch to learn about institutional racism, PBS NewHour (June 5, 2020).
• Watch – Henry Louis Gates Jr. vital four-hour documentary series on Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (2019).

Resources for Mental Health and Self-Care

Mental health

• Mental Health and Wellness in a Racism Pandemic:  A town hall with President Obama where he is joined by Congressman John Lewis, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson, Writer and Survivor of Police Brutality Leon Ford, Jr., and Youth Leader LeQuan Muhammad, in a conversation moderated by Activist and Author Darnell Moore. (6/5/20)
• Compassion Fatigue: The American Bar Association addresses compassion fatigue and how it can affect lawyers.
• 60 Digital Resources for Mental Health: The list from Social Work License Map spans diagnostic tools, research portals, government organizations, nonprofits, blogs, and phone hotlines devoted to addressing a range of issues.
• “Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience: A Framework For Addressing and Preventing Community Trauma” From the Prevention Institute and funded by Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit in Northern California, this report offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the relationship between community trauma and violence. (Feb 2016)
• National Center for Substance Abuse and Child Welfare (SAMHSA) provides a list of Trauma resources for children and families affected by trauma exposure.
• The National Alliance for Mental Illness: NAMI’s Statement On Recent Racist Incidents and Mental Health Resources for African Americans (5/29/20)

Self-Care

• Urban Institute’s “Trauma-Informed Community Building and Engagement” (April 2018)  
• How to Quell the OverWhelm: Using Organization and Self-Care to Manage Stress: American Bar Association
• “Self-Care For Politically Charged Times” (2019) An eight part series with topics like “The Five Rules for Self-Care”, building a community of care, taking a moment, designing personal wellness plans and more.
• “21 Self-Care Resources to Help You Heal and Survive” A list of tips, tools and resources curated by The Rockwood Leadership Institute for self-care actions we can all take in our daily lives. (July 2016)
• Healing in Action: A Toolkit for Black Lives Matter Healing Justice & Direct Action. This toolkit was created to collate, condense and share the lessons learned by this movement in ensuring that our direct actions are centered on healing justice. (2018)
• A few resources for those who find themselves sitting for hours at a time at a desk or in your improvised work from home office set-up, here are guides to lead you through some stretching moves you can easily do from your home office. First a short video featuring some chair yoga moves, a one-pager with some examples of desk yoga and meditation, and a finally a series of 10 Desk Chair moves everyone can do.

Special thanks to National Legal Aid & Defender Association for this list