Quote by Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self‑indulgence, it is self‑preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

For those whom society does not value or protect — especially Black women, marginalised people — taking care of yourself is not a luxury or selfishness. It is a refusal to be consumed and discarded by systems designed to exhaust you. Rest and care, in this context, become a form of resistance.

Lorde wrote this in A Burst of Light, published in 1988, while living with liver cancer. The book is a journal of her illness and her refusal to let it define her, written at a time when the AIDS crisis was devastating communities and the Reagan administration was cutting healthcare and social services.

American writer, feminist, and civil rights activist who described herself as 'Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.' Her essays and poetry addressed the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality with fierce clarity, and her 1984 collection Sister Outsider remains essential reading.