Overview
The purpose of #CapeBreak is to provide personally tested and theoretically grounded methods of self-restoration, resilience, and joy to address the health and happiness of Black womxn.
The Strong Black Womxn (SBW) and Superwomxn Schema (SWS) narratives are frequently heard throughout the course of a Black womxn’s life. SWS suggests that Black womxn feel both an obligation to help others and present an image of strength at the expense of suppressing one’s own emotions and health needs (Woods-Giscombe, 2010). This multi-generational narrative becomes engrained into the subconscious minds of Black womxn to the extent that one may feel “guilty” for engaging in brief bouts of self-restoration.
#CapeBreak refrains from the use of the word “self-care” because that term has been misused, overused, and even abused throughout the decades. When people speak of self-care, they tend to think of things with a price tag - massages, pedicures, lavish trips, or things that come in a bottle (Carter, 2020). This misused word represents the exact opposite of what Audre Lorde meant, while undergoing her cancer journey, when she wrote, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 1988, pg. 125). Although I absolutely agree with Lorde’s declaration of self-preservation, this term does not speak to the proactive, transformative, and divine power of self-restoration – the cornerstone of a #CapeBreak movement.