self care

The following is adapted from a talk given by Dr. Townes during the 2024 Wabash Center’s BIPOC Faculty Luncheon at  the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). Self-care is within the matrix of our total health; how we care for ...

It was Christmas break 2019 and I was exhausted. I had just finished my first full-time semester. I was frantically composing new lecture material during the day and at night nurturing twin toddlers. There was little self-care happening in my days, let alone a dynamic spiritual life. After losing myself in ...

Every week during my online course I assign a body-oriented spiritual practice that overlaps with what is often called “self-care.” I sometimes hesitate to use “self-care” as a descriptor because it has been so overused in some contexts that it has become a cliché catchphrase. Still, I recognize the need ...

Teaching through pandemic brought home two basic lessons to me: What happens in our students’ lives affects their performance in the classroom. Professors are mere human beings who can only do so much before our health suffers. Both seem obvious. Surely, I knew all that even before the pandemic? Perhaps. ...

When the pandemic hit, everything changed overnight. We were in a state of crisis. Crisis has a way of exposing our frailty. Our vulnerability rises to the surface without our permission. Lack of control, uncertainty about the future, and anxiety about the unknown work together like a torrent, forcing us ...