For Cleo Wade, Self-Care Is Reading Audre Lorde and Wearing Her Favorite ‘Vote’ Necklace
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Self-care is less a checklist for Cleo Wade, the poet, activist, and author of the collections Heart Talk and Where to Begin, and more a way of being. “Self-care is a manifestation of self-love,” she says. “If self-love says, ‘I love you,’ self-care says, ‘Prove it.’”
The problem with self-care is that while it’s become easier to talk about—you can pretty much justify anything as self-care these days—it’s become harder to actually do. “Pre-COVID, I'd say that a lot of people, myself included, struggled with thinking that something that was actually self-maintenance is self-care,” Wade says. “We've all had a friend call and you're like, ‘Oh my God, sorry, I can't talk, it's self-care Sunday—I just finished hot yoga and I'm late to my manicure appointment and I still have to get the laundry.’” Those things are important, but “if we don’t actually go inward to discover what our care for ourselves looks like, we'll spend our entire lives doing self-maintenance and never getting even a minute of actual self-care.”
For Wade, the past several months have been a call to do exactly that kind of discovery. “I've worked so hard my whole life,” she says. “Did I work this hard to not be able to have a dance break in the middle of the afternoon with my baby, if I want to? Have I taken the risks and done the things that I’ve done, did I do it all to not have joy? Did I do it all to not be able to enjoy the sun on my back when I'm blessed enough to have a sunny day in this wild world we're living in?”
We asked Wade about how she shows herself love, her “rebellious” bath routine, and finding joy.
Where to Begin
$13.00, Amazon
Heart Talk The Journal
$12.00, Amazon
Glamour: Where do you even begin with self-care in a year that feels so truly disorienting?
Cleo Wade: One of the ways I find I'm able to feel cared for by myself this year is by keeping my routines really flexible. Different things are needed on different days, in a way that I haven't ever felt before—like my self-care is going to look differently on the day of the Breonna Taylor verdict than it's going to look on any other Tuesday. When we're living through so many traumatic incidents, when the president says something wildly irresponsible that could rob hundreds of thousands of more people of their lives, self-care just looks a little different.
The things I try to incorporate in some way weekly are long baths with a podcast and walks by myself.
What podcasts are you listening to right now?
My best friend DeRay Mckesson has a podcast called Pod Save the People, which I love. Two of my really good girlfriends are both on it too, and it's really nice to have the news of the world contextualized by a group of people of color; especially processing that information through the lens of two Black women, I find really helpful and soothing.
How indulgent do you get with your baths?
This is probably kind of dark, but when I type in G-O-O in my browser, it goes to Goop before Google. I don't know when I became that person, but I noticed this the other day and I was like, Oh my God.
The G.Tox products are so amazing. They're definitely a treat—you can get some good old-fashioned baking soda and $2.99 Epsom salts, which will do the trick just fine. But I think every woman knows that feeling where you [need a treat]; you’re pouring so much energy into every single other person in your life. We buy presents for other people first, we plan other people's special occasions first, we put ourselves last on our list. So sometimes you need that rebellious feeling of like, “I indulged so many other people, I really just want to indulge in myself—I deserve the $30 bath soak.” Whenever I’m in that mood, I guess I obsessively shop on Goop.
I get a lot of their face masks, I like their body cream, but their bath products are really on a whole other level. I'm telling you the Martini soak—I’m like a #ad for Goop right now—but you have to try The Martini. It's so good.
"The Martini" Bath Soak
$35.00, Goop
G.Tox Ultimate Dry Brush
$20.00, Goop
What’s one thing you use daily that’s making you feel grounded right now?
About four or five years ago, my friend Jen Meyer made me this little name plate that says “vote” on it. I wore it for 2016, and then I was mad after, so I took off for a while, and then I put it back on in 2018. Every time I look at it I feel something. It makes me feel rooted and grounded in my own spiritual journey around political activism.
Vote Necklace
$295.00, By Chari
I wasn't the person who grew up in the family that was really into politics—I was pretty apolitical even for most of my 20s. But I got to a place where I understood that I am powerful in the political space in the sense that my vote counts, and whether or not I recycle matters, and the space I take up in the world can be as powerful as I want it to be. Every time I look at the necklace, I'm reminded of how I ended up in the space of being an active citizen and an active member of my community.
What are you reading right now?
I recently read A Burst of Light: and Other Essays by Audre Lorde. I read a lot of interviews and essays by Black women. I have a book of interviews, it's one of my favorite books, called Black Women Writers at Work and it's interviews with everyone from Toni Cade Bambara to Maya Angelou to Alice Walker. I think going into history actually really helps to cope with what we're going through today, because we're reminded that we've gone through hard things and we can get through hard things. I feel really held warmly and lovingly in the hands of our elders, specifically Black women thought leaders and writers, in that way.
A Burst of Light: and Other Essays
$20.00, Amazon
Black Women Writers at Work
$143.00, Abe Books
If you read even, like, three Audre Lorde essays, you're like, “I can fucking handle this shit.” Because she knew, she knew the answers were there. She was talking about these things. We keep thinking that only the problems are in our history, but a lot of the tools for solutions are in our history as well.
What’s the most urgent item on your to-do list right now?
You know, it’s so funny, I have this Post-it note on my desk right now that says “To do: everything I can.” It’s interesting because I remember talking to Gloria Steinem and someone in the audience asked, with so many things going on, how do you prioritize the issues?
If you've ever heard her speak, she has this way of saying something so plainly it makes you feel the answer was so obvious—it doesn't feel like a knowledge bomb was dropped on you; it feels like a knowledge treasure trove was uncovered within you. So she said so casually, “Don’t.” Don't prioritize. Do it all. She said prioritizing is essentially putting one person's life or issues over another's, so get to work on everything. You can have a method for how you're going to get to everything, but still get to everything.
How are you finding joy in this time?
Joy during this time is a little like self-care. It's not something you have; it's something you claim. If you don't claim joy during the pandemic, you’re not going to have it. Joy is available to you every day, really regularly and in really big ways. But you have to grab it. I do that by making sure that I didn’t work so hard just to build this capsule of pressure where I can’t enjoy the fruits of my labor—whether that's dancing with my baby, having chocolate cake for breakfast sometimes, or just taking a breath.
Macaela MacKenzie is a senior editor at Glamour.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
