Collective Care // A Guide to Supporting Others While Supporting Ourselves
We’re writing this — our first Shopping Small Guide — with competing interests. Like many of you now, we’re all too aware of what resources we have and how we can best use them. We’re hunkering down, saving where we can, managing our budgets in ways we might not have done previously. We’re acutely aware that many are struggling to pay rent, to cover food needs, and to sustain basic necessities, as they are being financially dragged under by this virus.
We also know that as we pull back and retreat, we’re creating more pain for independent businesses, creative spaces, and places in the world that rely on our support to make their own ends meet. We’re conscious of places closing now and shutting their doors, and though we are hopeful that they will reopen, we’re aware that they also might not be able to if they can’t sustain some aspect of their business during lockdown. And we’re worried that the vital businesses that made up our neighborhoods— that we might have overlooked as luxuries but which were sustaining the connections we all need in our lives unbeknownst to us — will disappear. That the texture and heart of human life, the places that baked the bread, pulled that shot of espresso and sold the books (insert your own list here), will cease to exist even if the conditions return to allow them to.
So it’s with those dual tensions in mind, that we offer up this guide. We’ve tried to identify products from places that we’ve supported and who we’d encourage you to continue to support if you can. Some offer self-care essentials, or new skills (clothes repairing). Some offer treats like really good coffee beans or magic (yes you don’t need unicorn horn polish, but does that idea make you smile?). Some offer support to get us through — conversation cards feel like a must now for those fading home relationships. Some just kindness like a simple thank you.
We hope that you can find something here that might help you and help others who created these as we negotiate these uncertain times in relation to one another. And as always let us know what we missed, what you love and what is bringing joy to you in who you support in your life right now.
Local Spotlight
If you live in the SF Bay Area, we hope you’ll join us in supporting these women-owned brands and businesses. Each of them has impacted us and helped to lift us up through this time, and we want to do the same for them.
