________
Dear you,
Today is my Care Day, a day fully dedicated to taking care of myself.
Today you are part of it.
What you are holding in your hands is a little gift for you and the opportunity to pass the gift forward to somebody else.
“To take care of somebody or something” is a reflexive verb and I like to think that this action is too, in more than one way.
Since I have started this experiment, I have realised that the precious time spent for myself - which I felt not to have - had always been mine.
It is indeed a process and I am still learning the dos and don’ts that serve me best..
To me, it means listening to my body and getting to know myself more.
The reason why you have received this package is because when I love myself and I make it my intention to feel good, this feeling affects people surrounding me in a positive way as a ripple effect.
In other words:
I take care of myself (and therefore of you too)
________
13 people scattered all around Italy - with a brief interlude in France
1 disposable camera
A box with some money to cover postal costs
A loose set of instructions
And a personal message (not the one above) for the next person in the chain.
It might be called “community art”,
it could be labelled as “hipster”,
and it can be categorised as //already seen and //already done.
“Mi prendo cura di me (e quindi di te)” [=I take care of myself (and therefore of you too)]
is (probably) all of that and it doesn’t care about labels, anyway.
It is an analog chain of people sharing the desire to experiment with self-care.
Each person can participate by spending as much time as they want on something that makes them feel well. Then they have the opportunity to send a message to the next person, in the format of a classic chain letter.
I have asked the participants to use the disposable camera to represent the title of the project through their eyes.
Lastly, send everything to the next person.
[The addresses are covered with a handcrafted strategy in order to protect privacy.]
It is a way to involve my community into what I am doing.
It is my way of multiplying the circles of care by extending the opportunity I have been given to experiment with self-care by the Culture for Solidarity grant with my closest ones.
It came to my mind during one of my Care Days.
I had already had some chats with my friends about the project, about self-care and about what they would do if they had a Care Day for themselves.
“ I mean, you can have it, if you want”.
This is what I sometimes replied.
Technically we all can.
Of course, there’s a difference if you are paid for experimenting with it.
I won’t hide that participating in this project has helped me a lot throughout these months, not only personally, but also financially speaking.
Therefore, I am aware that our daily routine often doesn’t allow us to have a full day dedicated wholly to self-care.
However, a lot of my friends agreed that, for one reason or another, they were hardly ever devoting time to taking care of themselves.
This is how this little box came to fruition.
I will write an update when the box comes full circle once I receive it back 🙂
