selfcarefully (Thick Press, 2019) by Gracy Obuchowicz
*Please note that the 2019 edition of selfcarefully is currently sold out. We are currently working on a revised version with expanded Ayurvedic content, due out in 2024.*
selfcarefully is a “self-helpish” book about the power of authentic self-care and it’s many necessary applications in our lives and our world.
Designed and illustrated by Maria Habib.
selfcarefully is an artistic collaboration between an author, a designer, a small press, and a risograph printer. Printed by a digital duplication process commonly used for artist’s books, selfcarefully contains 30 color-illustrated vignettes, as well as excerpts from the author’s interviews with a community organizer, an education advocate, and a youth mentor.
Examples of vignettes include: self-care and setting boundaries, self-care and soaking grains, self-care and the moon, self-care and racism, self-care and consumerism, self-care and perfectionism, self-care and the patriarchy, and self-care and community.
selfcarefully reflects a concept of self-care that originated in Black feminist circles and soon spread to public health, disability, therapy, and social work communities. In recent years, the term self-care has become ubiquitous—as have critiques about its individualization of structural issues. However, there is little printed matter about a new crop of anti-consumerist, community-oriented, body positive approaches to self-care that Gracy calls “authentic self-care.”
“In our modern world,” explains Gracy, “we’ve confused buying things with taking care of ourselves. Since I believe consumerist culture is at the root of so many self-care blocks, I wanted to write a book about a different kind of self-care, the kind that heals the misbelief that we’re never enough (but could be if we bought the right kind of green juice).”
selfcarefully has been reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly and featured by AIGA Eye on Design and Entropy. Gracy Obuchowicz was featured in the Washington Post and on the Therapy Chat Podcast. Here is a press kit with sample spreads and bios of the collaborators.