In this solo video, Dr. Jameca Cooper, author of I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing, emphasizes the importance of self‑care for mothers as children return to in‑person school. She defines self‑care as any activity that prioritizes personal relaxation and love, noting that it varies per individual. Dr. Cooper offers concrete, low‑effort strategies that can be integrated into a busy morning routine: listening to personally chosen music instead of children’s soundtrack, treating oneself to breakfast or a coffee as a form of intentional indulgence, and turning off phone notifications—either completely or in timed windows—to reduce stress and reclaim mental space. She frames these practices within the broader “radical healing” approach discussed in her workbook, encouraging moms to reclaim time for themselves now that their children are back in school. The video concludes with an invitation for viewers to try the tips, share feedback, and stay tuned for further mental‑health content.
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Hi, this is Dr. Jameca Cooper, and make sure you subscribe to this channel before we go any further. Today we're going to talk about my latest book, which is I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing. I want to refer to this book because I think it's very important that we talk about self-care. It's back to school time. Many of you moms out there are sending your children back to school in person, and now maybe after having your children with you all summer, you have time for yourself. So one of the biggest pieces of radical healing— and we talk about this in the workbook— it's about how to make sure you incorporate time for you, time for self-care. So what is self-care? Self-care is what you do for you to make time for you, to make you a priority, um, to make you relax, to make you love on yourself. It's whatever that is, and that's going to vary from person to person. But some of the tips that I have for you back to school time for moms— maybe these are some things you have not been able to do all summer or even last year. If you had school-aged children at home with you for virtual learning, these are some things you can consider engaging in now that you have some time for yourself. So let's talk about a few of the things you could do on your way. If you're taking your kids to school every day or you have to go to work every day, some of the things you could do to engage in self-care just on your way to work every day. One of those things is listen to a few of the songs that you want to listen to. Maybe some of the songs you don't get to listen to when your children are in the car. Maybe when your children are in the car, you're listening to whatever Disney songs or music that they want to listen to. So take some time to listen to some of the songs that you've always wanted to listen to and haven't had the time. Whether that's 1 song, 2 songs, 3 songs, make sure you take the time to just sit and relax and listen to those songs on your way into work or wherever it is that you need to go in the morning. One of the other things you can do to engage in self-care is to simply stop and get yourself breakfast or a cup of coffee. For For some people, that is a really good form of self-care because it's not something that you do all the time. It may not be something that you invest in or spend money on because maybe you don't see it as being something that you need or something that is important. But just being able to pull into the Starbucks line and get a cup of coffee, especially if you're not able to do this a lot, is really a way to engage in self-care and to really prioritize your feelings and your needs. So music, coffee, or breakfast are a couple of things we've mentioned already. Another thing you can do for yourself to engage in self-care is— this is a big one— turn the notifications on your phone off. Many times when I'm working with women in therapy, whether it's in person or virtually, I notice how many times during a 45-minute session their phone goes off. So whether it's notifications for your email, calls, text messages, social media, every— other apps as well, women have a lot of notifications going off in their phones. Some of these may be necessary if they're work-related, but all of them are not necessary. Do yourself a favor now that it's back-to-school time and turn off the notifications. If you can't turn them off for a whole day, If you can't turn them off for an entire 8 hours, practice turning them off for 2-hour windows at a time. You'd be surprised at how calm and relaxed you feel just by not knowing that your phone is going to ding or ring during those times. You need to take your, your time. Give yourself some time to sit and relax and just do nothing and to not be stressed by the expectation of what the notifications will bring to you. Um, those are my tips today. We will revisit this again in a little bit about other ways for self-care for women, but today we wanted to focus on the back-to-school time. So for moms, this is your time. Take some time for you now that the kiddos are back in school and do something that you haven't been able to do for a while. Try out some of these tips. Let me know how they work. Good luck with them. Stay tuned for more videos on mental health. Have a great year for the kids out there and for the moms, and thank you for tuning in. This is Dr. Jameca Cooper.
