Self & Community Care Archives - Nicole Clark Consulting

22 Feb, 2023

Self Care Corner: Prioritize Your Lightest Weight

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-02-21T18:37:16-05:00February 22nd, 2023|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Community Care, Self Care Corner, staff capacity, Sustainability|0 Comments

“What’s the lightest weight we can carry now?”

This question was asked by a client during one of our project check-ins at the height of COVID-19. The client, like many organizations, experienced drastic shifts in their programming. Namely, deciding which programs and strategies were flexible enough to pivot to a virtual space while figuring out work from home setups for staff.

Figuring out what was “essential” and what wasn’t impacted staff’s capacity to support program participants, many whom support communities heavily impacted by COVID-19.

We discussed how they make decisions under normal circumstances. As they’re nimble, what’s normal for them is operating with the assumption that anything can occur to undermine how they support program participants.

The client had to make quick programmatic decisions. If their programming could no longer operate as intended, they must answer:

What can we learn from this?
How can we pivot what’s deemed as essential?
What qualifies as “non-essential”?
How can a “non-essential” program become more essential in the future?

This process combines program design with evaluative thinking. Evaluative thinking requires routinely questioning what’s happening as it’s happening. Sometimes when this happens, we disregard the above questions and instead answer:

“What’s the lightest weight we can carry?”

Resiliency is like a muscle. We build it by starting with the lightest weight. When we’re able to handle the lightest weight with proper form, we progress to a heavier weight.

While the client example focuses on programs and services, this question can also be asked in our personal lives.

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9 Mar, 2022

Self Care Corner: Representation Burnout

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-09-28T14:57:45-04:00March 9th, 2022|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Burnout, DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for nearly 2 years. Mostly because it’s complicated to talk about.

Representation burnout.

I first came across this term via Shine’s article “Why We Need to Talk About – and Recognize – Representation Burnout” by Martha Tesema.

The article was posted a year before George Floyd was murdered in May 2020. The day after his murder, I facilitated a partnership meeting for a client organization. I joined the Zoom meeting several minutes early with the partnership co-leads, after spending the day looking at news coverage of George’s murder.

I admitted to them that I wasn’t fully present, yet I still wanted to fully show up. I also admitted it at the start of the meeting with the partners.

In Nonprofit Quarterly article “The Hidden Cost of DEI Work –And What to Do About It,” , co-author Tiloma Jayasinghe asks questions that perfectly sums up how I often feel:

What if I, the professional facilitator, break down in tears in front of a full Zoom room of clients because this work, and the stakes if it fails, feels like I am letting BIPOC people down and ruining this small opening for workplace liberation?

How am I supposed to cope with race equity work when another Black trans woman was murdered today, and/or last night another Asian elder was hit and painfully injured on the Lower East Side of New York City, and/or how many hundreds of Black people have been murdered since brother George Floyd took his last breath? Where is the outrage for them?

When and how do I just pause and stop so that I can rest, recharge, so that I can be on this journey for the long haul?

“The Hidden Cost of DEI Work–And What to Do About It” by Andrea J. Rogers and Tiloma Jayasinghe (Nonprofit Quarterly, 2021)

When people see me, they see a Black woman, because we’re visual. Getting to know me, you’ll discover that I’m a Black cisgender heterosexual woman. Going deeper, you’ll discover that I’m a Black cisgender heterosexual woman, from the south, an identical twin, has a bachelors degree from a HBCU and a masters degree from an Ivy League, became motherless at age 17, grew up in Christianity, full time self employed for 6 years, a New York City transplant for 11 years, now resides in Washington, DC, and so on.

Like you, I have multiple identities and lived experiences. Also like you, the identity that gets the most prominence largely depends on the space I walk into.

And sometimes, these identities are the only reasons we’re allowed into spaces in the first place.

How do we deal with this?

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16 Oct, 2020

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:53-04:00October 16th, 2020|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Self Care Corner|0 Comments

My day-to-day didn’t change much, if at all, when the current pandemic began. As the months passed, my mental health and self-esteem slowly declined. Much of it, outside of the psychological impact of dealing with a virus that still has many unknowns and sheltering in place, was due to my own expectation to continue to perform optimally.

I had a laundry list of tasks to complete and tried to show up to my work as though a pandemic and racial injustices weren’t occurring, even when my clients asked for grace as they pivoted to support their staff and program participants.

While I still have many items on my to-do list, most of these items aren’t tackled on a normal day. As we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I’m lucky if I’m able to knock out 1-2 high-level items. The more items I crossed off my list, the more accomplished I felt…but most of these items didn’t move me towards my bigger goals in any significant way.

Several years ago, I came across the concept of a “well done” list. I tucked the concept away and thought about it the other day as I looked at my ever-growing to-do list.

What’s a “well done” list? Similar to a to-do list, it’s a list of tasks. Instead of focusing on the number of items you cross off your to-do list, a “well done” list acknowledges the quality of what gets done.

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14 Feb, 2020

Self Care Corner: Your Friendships Are Just As Important As Your Relationships

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:48:04-04:00February 14th, 2020|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: self care, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I met a few friends at a hookah lounge on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York.

At one point during the evening, one friend asked everyone to go around and share how they came into my life and one thing they’ve always appreciated about me.

I had friends there from my grad school program, feminist and other activist/social justice spaces, classmates from Spelman College, and friends I made from my pole dance classes.

As everyone took their turn sharing how they’d met me and what they appreciated about me, I realized how much I’d compartmentalized friendships. It had been rare for me to have my friends mixed in this way.

I also realized how uncomfortable I felt. Not only because I’ve always felt awkward hearing people speak positively about me, but also because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d mentioned to any of them how much they meant to me.

Intuitively, we know that our friends care about us. We also know which friends are always up to have fun and which ones we can count on in times of need. But how often do we tell our friends how much they mean to us?

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18 Dec, 2019

Ask Nicole: How Are You Doing?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:46:06-04:00December 18th, 2019|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Ask Nicole, self care|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

Early in the year, I picked up my phone to speak with a friend that I hadn’t talked to in a while.

We met while as college students and youth activists through one of Advocates for Youth’s youth leadership initiatives. She’s a pediatrician and had recently opened a home pediatrics business.

We were scheduled to talk about our businesses, and before we started, she asked, “First off, how are you doing? I see you doing great things via social media, but I really want to know how you are doing.”

I was caught off guard.

It took a few seconds to respond, and I realize I couldn’t remember the last time someone asked me if I was ok or how am I doing without it being tied to a request.

I get many requests for my time. Personally and professionally. Sometimes these requests start off with a “How are you?” or an “I hope you’re doing well”. Sometimes they get straight to the point. Most of the time these are people I’ve never spoken to before or they’re people I haven’t heard from in some time.

Or sometimes, I’ll reach out to someone only to discover they thought about me recently but didn’t think to reach out. Their reason? Because they look at what I post on social media and believe that everything is fine.

When was the last time you asked someone “How are you doing?” and it wasn’t connected to a request for their time?

How often do you think of someone and assume everything is fine based on what they elect to share on social media?

How often do you think of someone in passing, and make no effort to reach out to them?

When was the last time you made plans to spend time with someone and allowed for those plans to fall through?

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Self Care Corner: Prioritize Your Lightest Weight

Self Care Corner: Representation Burnout

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

Self Care Corner: Your Friendships Are Just As Important As Your Relationships

Ask Nicole: How Are You Doing?

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