self-compassion as cultural concept

What does self-compassion mean to you?  

What is a word, phrase, example, feeling, objection...truly, whatever comes up.

Here's why I ask:  

A couple months ago a person I deeply respect voiced an important question - Is self-compassion culturally competent and congruent for SBW's (Strong Black Women)?

When it was posed to a group, the response naturally varied.  It was a powerful discussion and an important query to consider fully.  I've been sitting with it and continuing to have conversations about it ever since.

In my work, I support many people to understand their nervous system and give a lot of talks, presentations, roundtable discussions and workshops under a title that includes "Self-Compassion."  

Every time, I continue to wonder and reflect...who does this speak to?  Who does this leave out or turn away?

One understanding of compassion highlights the combination of an emotional response to another's distress or perceived suffering along with an authentic desire to help.  

Many people do this generously with others.  In fact, there is substantial research and evidence that it's a natural and biological instinct, evident even in infants.  How wondrous is that!?!

Yet I also speak to and work with So! Many! People! who give so much of this compassion - emotional responsiveness and desire to help - toward others' suffering while they persistently seek to avoid acknowledgement and responsiveness to their own suffering.  

Despite a strong tendency to attune to and respond to distress in others, they tune out rather than tune in to their own distress.

This comes at great cost to their wellbeing.  Their mood.  Their relationships. Their productivity.  Their health.  Their impact for the people and causes they love so much.

When I name, encourage, and facilitate tools to increase self-compassion, I come from this place...knowing the absolute urgency for people to offer the same emotional care and responsiveness to their own suffering that they give so generously to others and witnessing what is at stake if they don't.  

I also come from a place of seeing self-compassion, especially for those from historically marginalized identities, as an act of willful rejection of the dominant norms and white supremacy culture that has persistently told whole groups of people that they could not honor their own needs, respond to or alleviate their own suffering, nor experience themselves as whole, joyful, worthy beings apart from constant work and productivity.

From this perspective, self-compassion, especially for people from marginalized backgrounds, requires a complete paradigm shift. 

It brings to mind the amazing work of The Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey, her Nap Ministry, and her book and resources of Rest is Resistance.  

Still, I wonder if this message is reaching people that most need to hear it... people who have been consistently discarded, devalued, held to impossible standards, denied their basic rights.  

People who deserve encouragement and opportunities to tend to their own distress, to be supported, to be valued apart from their productivity, so that they can continue to show up as their whole selves and pursue the impact they want to have without sacrificing their wellbeing in the process.

I continue to wonder whether self-compassion is a culturally competent concept.

I don't have the answer.  

I continue to reflect, explore, and discuss how this concept lands across cultures and would love to hear your responses to self-compassion as a concept and how it relates to your identity, if you'd be so generous as to share.

You matter.  You can make a difference.  I'm so thankful you're here.