Self-Care Is Resistance: Honoring Black Wellness This Black History Month

For generations, self-care in the Black community has been more than a trend — it has been survival.

Before it became a hashtag, before it became aesthetic, before it became something packaged and sold — it was necessity. It was prayer whispered over tired hands. It was oil massaged into scalps on Sunday evenings. It was women gathering in kitchens, braiding hair, sharing recipes, sharing burdens.

Self-care has always lived in us.

The History We Don’t Always Talk About

Black communities have historically had limited access to healthcare, mental health resources, and safe spaces for rest. Yet we created our own systems of care.

• Front porch conversations that doubled as therapy.
• Church mothers who held emotional wisdom.
• Herbal remedies passed down through generations.
• Beauty rituals that protected both body and identity.

These weren’t luxuries. They were protection.

Rest Is Revolutionary

For Black women especially, rest has often felt undeserved. We are praised for strength, resilience, sacrifice — but rarely for softness.

Black women carry:

• Generational expectations
• Caregiving roles
• Career ambition
• Community leadership
• Motherhood

And still, we are told to keep going.

But this month — and every month — we reclaim rest.

Rest is not laziness.
Stillness is not weakness.
Boundaries are not selfish.

Choosing to care for yourself is an act of resistance in a world that has historically demanded your labor.

Redefining Self-Care for Us

Self-care doesn’t have to look like a spa day (though we love those). It can look like:

• Logging off earlier
• Saying no without guilt
• Drinking water before coffee
• Protecting your peace
• Using products that honor your skin, your body, your story

It can look like creating your own Haven.

Bringing It Home

At NAVI Self Care, our mission has always been about elevating the at-home self-care experience. But deeper than that, it’s about honoring where self-care began for so many of us — in our homes, in our rituals, in our lineage.

This Black History Month, we celebrate the generations of Black women and families who practiced wellness before it was mainstream.

This month inside the Haven, we will explore:

• Black women and rest
• Motherhood and generational healing
• Beauty rituals as cultural preservation
• Softness as strength

Because self-care isn’t new to us.

It’s ancestral.

And we are simply reclaiming it.