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by Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, lead co-editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
I hope everyone enjoyed our Super-Self Care Summer! Now, it’s time to Re-Set for the next season. September is Self-Care Awareness Month. Gretchen Rubin calls September another “new year”—as a time to re-new and re-set. Happy New Year! As is our tradition for the past few years, we provide a Self-Care September Calendar, with daily doses of Self-Care! Access it here. Use it to guide your month of solidifying and celebrating self-care as a habit.
This month also marks the 10-year anniversary of our Self-Care, A-to-Z blog! The blog was inspired by our book, The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals, published in March 2016. Happy Anniversary! Unbelievable! Time flies when you’re having such a splendid time with self-care.
Reflecting on the Journey
In 2008, after a critical incident, I became convicted and set out on a mission of changing the profession of social work—and other helping professions—to self-care being viewed as essential, not ancillary. I wanted to affect the culture to one of organizational wellness and practitioner well-being. Philosophically and pragmatically, I dedicated myself to that cause. I focused on producing resources, creating forums, contributing scholarship, and collaborating with like-minded colleagues. I was determined to make self-care both accessible and important!
The Mission: Provide information, insights, and inspiration to embed self-care into the fabric of what it means to be an ethical and effective practitioner, who sustains in the profession, whilst flourishing as a human being. Along the way, I’m fortunate to collaborate with so many others who share this commitment. What a gift! I’m especially grateful to Linda Grobman for her visionary and diligent collaboration on this journey.
I am humbled, hopeful, and happy about the exponential impact of both the blog and book. As we said in our book, “We hope this book will be a useful tool, an encouraging resource, and an inspiring gift for many years to come” (p. 148). Likewise, our inaugural blog post, “Struggles, Strategies, and Successes in Self-Care,” stated: “This blog space is for us to have a shared think tank and support network for the important commitment [to self-care].”
Taking Stock, Celebrating Progress, and Continuing the Cause
Over this decade, the book has become a core resource for many—for example, as an educational text, continuing education resource, and individual practitioner guidebook. Similarly, the blog serves as an accessible forum and resource for informing, inspiring, and enlightening the self-care discourse and practitioner path. It’s a handy repository of almost 200 varied and substantive posts!
The blog is truly a communal space to share our self-care struggles, strategies, and successes. More then 65 diverse and delightful guest contributors provide an exponential depth and breadth of self-care wisdom! Many of the posts synthesize input from a range of people who respond to my (or guest authors’) queries and conversations.
When I talk with folks about the blog, I encourage that they scroll through and see which posts might resonate with them. I collaboratively challenge them: If there’s an aspect of self-care that interests you, I bet there’s a post pertaining to it. If not, let me know and I’ll write about it—or maybe it’s a sign that YOU need to write a post about it.
With a repository of a decade of self-care wisdom, continue to use this blog as a resource—for the next month, next year, and next decade! Access the blog for educational and training purposes. Share it with others. And, as always, consider contributing to the forum. We’re all on this self-care journey together!
Peace, Love, & Self-Care,
Erlene
Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. This LLC provides evaluation, training, and consultation for organizational wellness and practitioner well-being. Dr. Grise-Owens is lead editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals. As a former faculty member and graduate program director, she and a small (but mighty!) group of colleagues implemented an initiative to promote self-care as part of the social work education curriculum. Previously, she served in clinical and administrative roles. She has experience with navigating toxicity and dysfunction, up-close and personal! Likewise, as an educator, she saw students enter the field and quickly burn out. As a dedicated social worker, she believes the well-being of practitioners is a matter of social justice and human rights. Thus, she is on a mission to promote self-care and wellness!