Catherine takes (most of) her advice from last week, along with lots of others in the US – FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

HI folks– in last Sunday’s post, I listed five things to do for self-care and world-care. Briefly, they are:

• Get physical
• Get creative
• Get social
• Get outside
• Get clear about boundaries

I’m happy to say that I fulfilled (almost) all five on Saturday. Yesterday was the Hands Off! protest that took place in more than 1400 cities and towns across the US, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. Norah and I met up at my house to take the 73 bus to Harvard Square, and then the T to the Boston Common, where we rendezvoused with friends (always a minor miracle, even with google location tools) and tens of thousands of neighbors and fellow concerned humans.

Full disclosure: I ended up not making signs, but so many others came up with their own creative, funny, sharp and true messages. Some were very straightforward:

Others felt like more information was better.

Some of the signs were thematic:

Here are a few miscellaneous ones I particularly enjoyed:

This one is for the home blogger team in Canada:

It felt exhilarating, being with tens of thousands of people gathered for the purpose of expressing their dissent against US government actions. And knowing that hundreds of thousands (millions? the numbers aren’t in yet, but they will be big) of our neighbors across all 50 states, Canada and elsewhere were exercising their rights to dissent as well is heartening.

As we all know, any important goal, whether it is personal fitness or national integrity, is a long-term effort, and can’t be achieved in a day (even with such clever signage). For me and my US compatriots, there’s a lot of work ahead. But we all know how to do hard work, and we know how important the goal is and how great the benefits are for us, for our country, and for our neighbors around the world.

So, I’m both endorsing and working on following this self-care and world-care plan. If you have any points to add to the plan, feel free to chime in. See y’all next week.

Published by catherine w

I’m a feminist public health ethicist (yes, that’s a thing). I’m interested in heath behavior change, particularly around eating and activity, and how things other than knowledge affect our health decisions.I’m also a cyclist (road, sort-of-off-road, commuter), regular yoga-doer, occasional swimmer and kayaker and leisurely social walker.
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