Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation. — Audre Lorde
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
What does this quote ask you to notice today?
Reframing Care as Necessity
Audre Lorde’s line begins by challenging a common moral reflex: the tendency to label personal care as indulgent. By drawing a firm boundary—“not self-indulgence”—she redirects attention from pleasure or luxury toward something more fundamental. In her framing, rest, nourishment, and emotional safety are not optional rewards for good behavior but basic conditions for continuing. This reframing matters because it changes the stakes. If self-care is treated as a frivolity, it becomes the first thing sacrificed under pressure; if it is understood as preservation, it becomes part of staying alive and able. From the outset, Lorde positions the self not as a selfish project, but as the ground from which all other commitments are sustained.
A Political Context for Survival
Moving from the personal to the social, Lorde’s words carry the weight of lived realities in which certain people are routinely asked to endure more—more labor, more caregiving, more emotional management, and more risk. In that setting, “self-preservation” is not a private mantra but a response to systems that drain bodies and spirits. This is why the quote resonates beyond individual wellness culture. It asserts that caring for oneself can be a protective practice against burnout, neglect, and erasure. Lorde’s broader work, including essays in *A Burst of Light* (1988), often insists that survival requires clarity and courage; here, she adds that it also requires tending the self as a vital, defended resource.
The False Choice Between Self and Others
From there, the quote implicitly disputes the idea that caring for yourself and caring for others are opposing duties. The accusation of “self-indulgence” often assumes a zero-sum moral economy: any attention paid inward is attention stolen from family, community, or work. Lorde rejects that premise by tying self-care to continued capacity. In everyday life, this looks less like grand self-focus and more like sustainable limits—sleeping enough to think clearly, taking a break before resentment hardens, seeking support before crisis hits. Rather than shrinking responsibility, such practices can expand what a person is able to give over time, replacing heroic exhaustion with steadier, more honest contribution.
Self-Preservation as Boundary-Setting
Next, Lorde’s phrase points to boundaries as a core technology of survival. Preservation implies threat: something is being guarded against loss. Often the threat is not dramatic; it is cumulative—endless availability, unspoken expectations, or the slow corrosion of dignity when needs are routinely dismissed. Seen this way, self-care can be as practical as saying no, leaving early, turning off the phone, asking for equitable treatment, or refusing roles that require self-erasure. These acts can appear “indulgent” to people who benefit from your depletion. Lorde’s sentence supplies a moral counterweight: protecting your time, health, and inner life is not vanity—it is maintenance of a life.
The Body as the First Home
Then there is the bodily dimension of Lorde’s claim. Self-preservation begins with the simple truth that the body carries every demand placed upon it. Fatigue, stress, and chronic overextension do not remain abstract; they become headaches, insomnia, immune strain, and despair. To care for oneself is to acknowledge that the body is not an unlimited instrument. This perspective makes self-care less about curated comfort and more about basic stewardship: eating real food, taking medication consistently, moving in ways that restore, and seeking medical or therapeutic help when needed. Lorde’s insistence dignifies these actions as forms of staying intact—an insistence that can be especially urgent for people taught to ignore pain until it becomes unavoidable.
A Sustainable Ethic of Living
Finally, Lorde’s quote invites an ethic: live in a way that keeps you here. Preservation suggests continuity, not a one-time rescue. That means treating self-care as a practice—small, repeated choices that protect energy and identity—rather than as an occasional escape from an otherwise unlivable routine. In the long run, the sentence becomes a compass for evaluating demands: Does this expectation help me endure, or does it require my depletion? By answering that question honestly, Lorde’s framing turns self-care into an act of truth-telling. It is not about becoming less committed to others, but about refusing a life that can only be sustained through your disappearance.