1222830

research-article2024
FER0010.1177/01417789231222830Feminist ReviewIvana Radacic

article feminist review

Feminist Review

a spiritually orientated Issue 136, 125–141

© 2024 The Author(s)
Article reuse guidelines:
(self-)care approach to sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/01417789231222830
https://doi.org/10.1177/01417789231222830

human rights www.feministreview.com

Ivana Radačić

abstract
In recent years, there have been significant challenges to women’s rights. In addition to external attacks,
internal challenges include a dichotomous, oppositional and gendered framework of human rights, as well as
the problem of burnout and trauma in the field. Feminists have been addressing these problems by offering a
reconceptualisation of rights, developing the concept of spiritual activism, emphasising the power of erotics and
pleasure in activism, as well as incorporating self- and collective-care practices. Taking into account feminist
contributions and work that still needs to be done, as well as my own personal experiences in the fields of human
rights, self-development and spirituality, in this article I engage with the concept of care and spirituality to
propose changes in the conceptualisation and practices of human rights, with a view to developing a feminist
spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights.

keywords
women’s rights; self-care; feminist critiques of rights; burnout and trauma; well-being; spiritual activism; ethics of care
126 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

introduction
In recent years, there have been significant challenges to women’s human rights (Anti� and Rada�i�,
2020; Shameem et al., 2021). In addition to these attacks, the (women’s) human rights system1 has also
faced some internal challenges, which undermine its goals and effectiveness, including fragmentation
based on narrow and exclusionary identity politics, such as for example the recent ‘TERF wars’ (Pearce,
Erikaines and Vincent, 2020), and burnout in the field. While significant progress has been made in
the past decades on women’s rights, the progress is uneven and far from satisfactory. Women make up
the majority of people living in poverty. Violence against women is rampant, as are violations of
reproductive and sexual rights. Women are still underrepresented in political and economic decision-
making, while their caring work is not only undervalued but a factor driving their exclusion and
discrimination. These problems are compounded for groups of women in particularly disadvantaged
positions (UNWGDAWG, 2018).

From the beginning of the movement, feminists have criticised the framework of international human
rights as individualistic, dualistic, oppositional and gendered.2 It has increasingly been recognised how
the dualistic paradigm of human rights furthers separation and divisions, rather than the unity
consciousness that it strives to achieve (Sharp, 2021). A part of oppositional politics, human rights have
not been able to achieve radical social transformation (Keating, 2013). Furthermore, critical legal
scholar Peter Gabel (2014, p. 676) has argued that the liberal paradigm of rights, which ‘corresponds to
and expresses our fear of each other, and masks, obscures, denies our inherent bond and our longing for
mutual recognition … has now become an expression of the very problem we must overcome if we are to
realize our true social nature as inherently loving and generous social beings’.

In addition to these conceptual problems, and connected to them, are the issues of exhaustion, trauma,
depression and serious burnout in the human rights field, which have until recently been neglected.3
Human rights activists are often exposed to traumatising situations and face security risks, while
simultaneously dealing with heavy workloads and different work demands, which can result in serious
health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder. This problem is particularly pertinent for women
human rights activists, who are under-resourced and operate in hostile patriarchal environments, with
heightened risk of facing serious traumatic experiences, including violence, intimidation, surveillance,

1 ‘Human rights system’ is a broad term that includes different settings and actors: international experts and fora, as well as
international and local fora, movements and members of civil societies, including NGOs, activists and academics. The women’s
rights field is a part of the system addressing specifically rights violations that are sex and gender specific: that is, which target
women because they are women or affect women disproportionately. ‘Women’ is here used to refer to all the individuals who
self-identify as women.
2 Charlesworth, Chinkin and Wright (1991); Nedelsky (1993); Brown (2000); Otto (2005); Rada�i� (2008); Keating (2013).
3 These terms are not further defined in the scholarship on human rights. Burnout refers to the phenomenon related to general

exhaustion, lack of motivation and feelings of hopelessness resulting from stress at work. Trauma includes trauma expe-
rienced directly as a victim or as a witness of a traumatic event (direct trauma), as well as vicarious emotional residue of
exposure to the traumatic stories and experiences of others through work (vicarious trauma). Another common classification
of trauma is acute, chronic and complex, while another approach lists different traumatic events/experiences such as disas-
ters, violence, bullying, war, medical trauma etc. It is beyond the scope of this article to delve deeper into these concepts;
it is sufficient to recognise that different forms of trauma are present in the human rights field. For the different studies,
see Human Rights Resilience Project, ‘Well-being research’, https://www.hrresilience.org/well-being-research.html [last
accessed 15 November 2022].
 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 127

persecution, repression and criminalisation, both for what they do and who they are (Hernández Cárdenas
and Tello Méndez, 2017; Chamberlain, 2020; Cordero et al., 2023). Women’s human rights activists
experiencing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and disadvantage such as those belonging
to indigenous groups, minority and migrant women, women with disabilities, LGBTQI women, as well as
those working on certain issues perceived as particularly threatening to the patriarchal order, such as
sexual and reproductive rights, are particularly at risk (UNWGDAWG, 2018). In addition, the ‘culture of
martyrdom’ that undermines activists’ well-being (Chen and Gorski, 2015) is particularly alive in
women’s rights movements (Barry and Ðord-evi�, 2015; Hernández Cárdenas and Tello Méndez, 2017;
Chamberlain, 2020). Not only are women socialised to be(come) selfless caretakers and to neglect their
own needs, but the dire situation in the communities with which many women’s rights activists work
imposes a sense of urgency that leads to exhaustion (Emejulu and Bassel, 2020).

On the other hand, women human rights defenders and funding collectives are also pioneering
different self-care and collective-care (community-care) projects,4 which include different
practices, healing modalities and organisational set-ups aimed at enhancing well-being and building
the resilience of activists and the communities they serve, thereby ensuring the sustainability of
these movements (Barry and Ðord-evi�, 2007; Oliveira and Ðord-evi�, 2015; Hernández Cárdenas and
Tello Méndez, 2017; Taylor, 2021; Cordero et al., 2023). Such projects have been found to be beneficial
not only for the activists but also for the whole human rights movement, as empowered activists bring
more energy to the field, which ensures the sustainability of the movement. For example, the
participants (twenty changemakers from forty-five countries) of one eighteen-month inner
development project reported change not only at individual level but also at organisational and
sectoral levels (Severns Guntzel and Murphy Johnson, 2020).

This has important implications for the human rights field and requires a paradigm shift in the way
human rights are conceptualised and practised. We need to overcome dualistic thinking and action, and
foster wholeness and interconnectedness—between body and mind, one human and another, one
generation and the next and inner selves and outer environments (ibid.). In shaping the future of human
rights, feminist scholarship and practice have a lot to offer. Feminist contributions to the field include
the reconceptualisation of rights as relationships (Nedelsky, 1993), inclusion of the ethics of care in the
discourse on social justice (Held, 2006), the development of the concept of spiritual activism /
spiritualised social justice (Anzaldúa, 2002; Fernandes, 2003; Keating, 2008) and the post-oppositional
politics of change (Keating, 2013), as well as emphasis on the power of erotics (Lorde, 2007 [1984]) and
pleasure in activism (brown, 2019). These contributions also include self- and collective-care practices
developed by different feminist activists and groups.

Based on this scholarship and emerging practices, taking into account their contributions and
weaknesses, as well as my own personal experiences in the fields of human rights, self-development
and spirituality, this article engages the concept of care and spirituality to propose changes in the
conceptualisation and practices of human rights, with a view to developing a feminist spiritually

4 There are different understandings of self-care, collective care and well-being by different activists, as well as different prac-

tices and healing modalities. What ties these different concepts and modalities is that they refer to a ‘politically ethical stance
that involves the analysis of working practices and of relationships at the personal and collective levels’ and that ensures the
sustainability of the movements (Hernadez, cited in Cruz and Ðord-evi�, 2020, p. 245).
128 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

orientated (self-)care approach to human rights. Spirituality, as I use it, refers to the recognition of
the underlying unity of all existence, of our interconnectedness and interdependence.5 This spiritually
orientated approach to human rights is not avoidant of human experiences of suffering. On the
contrary, the understanding of our interconnectedness calls us to act to challenge different forms of
injustice that cause a lot of our suffering. It instils in us an attitude of caring and encourages caring
behaviours towards others and our environment. Care, under this approach, is employed as a central
concept of human existence characterised by the interconnectedness of all life. A caring approach
thus refers to the perspectives, attitudes and behaviours aimed at sustaining life.6

A spiritually orientated caring approach to human rights views humans in a holistic manner which
includes their spiritual nature and believes that social transformation cannot happen without
spiritual transformation—outer and inner work have to be interlinked. The approach does not prescribe
certain forms of spirituality or self- and collective-care practices. On the contrary, what spiritually
orientated (self-)care practices will mean to differently situated individuals and organisations in
different contexts in the human rights fields is to be defined by them. The approach does, however,
require addressing the dichotomous framework of human rights (us and them, inner and outer, spirit
and human, body and emotions, male and female), moving away from the ‘fighting’ paradigm, and
putting the well-being and (self-)care of activists and communities at the centre of the human
rights field.

This study is a reflexive feminist research practice that challenges the established boundaries of theory
and practice, personal and political, and researcher and research (Bungay and Carter Keddy, 1996;
Fook, 1999; Freshwater and Rolfe, 2001). It includes not only a literature review and an overview of
different well-being practices but also my personal experiences. My perspectives on this topic are
informed by my academic and activist work, my work as a UN independent expert on women’s rights, as
well as my self-development and healing path, which includes four years of integrated body-orientated
psychotherapy training, Kundalini yoga teacher training, tantra training, sacred-drumming training
and many other courses and workshops, as well as holding women’s circles and different workshops. My
motivation for this topic comes from observing problems with the conceptualisation and practice of
human rights and gaining new insights into these problems through engaging with the fields of self-
development, well-being and spirituality. Hence, my experiences are part of the research field, and my
research is simultaneously a process of personal inquiry (Freshwater and Rolfe, 2001). It is politically
and ethically engaged, as its purpose is to open spaces for new forms of knowledge and practice.

This article starts by discussing the reasons why we engage in human rights activism to uncover the
amount of trauma that we as women face under patriarchy, and the intrinsic motivations that many of
us have to alleviate human suffering, which often unconsciously puts us in the position of rescuers
against victim–perpetrator dynamics. These dynamics affect the way we engage with human rights,
creating the condition of fighting and affirming the oppositional framework. This article then discusses
how fighting leads to exhaustion and undermines our well-being, a topic that is often neglected in

5 It is not linked to any religion, and it is not restricted to any particular spiritual tradition.
6I draw on Cordero et al. (2023) for this conceptualisation of care.
 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 129

human rights activism. The article then proposes a paradigm shift necessary for our activism to result in
a meaningful and sustainable change, rooted in caring for and sustaining life.

pathways into human (women’s) rights activism:

the role of our own traumatic experiences
Due to women’s general disadvantaged position in society, their socialisation to care for others and
the history of feminist alternative visions of ethics, it is not surprising that women are at the
forefront of human rights movements, working for social change not only in the area of gender justice
but also in environmental justice, racial justice and other causes (UNWGDAWG, 2022). However, there
is not much research into what motivates women (or other people) to become human rights defenders.
While the existing studies mostly point to altruism (i.e. a concern for the well-being of others) as the
main motivation (Hernandez et al., 2018; Hall, 2019), there are studies which show that personal
hardship and traumatic experiences, such as childhood exposure to violence, are also significant
factors (Barendsen and Gardner, 2004).

Research with girls and young women human rights defenders across the globe (UNWGDAWG, 2022)
shows that most of the young activists have faced traumatic experiences, such as domestic and
sexual violence, sexual harassment and conflict: forms of which differ according to the different
social, political, legal, socioeconomic and familial contexts. Guarcia Oliveira and Jelena Ðord-evi�
(2015, p. 43) note how many of us become activists because of some kind of violence that we or our
people have experienced, and warn that how we deal with that violence and trauma ‘determines
whether they remain as open wounds, preventing us from moving forward in our causes’.

Indeed, in my encounters with different women and girl activists across the globe, as an educator,
activist and therapist, I have heard stories of various traumatic experiences rooted in gender injustice,
compounded by other systemic injustices, often of a trans-generational nature, ranging from
impositions of patriarchal gender roles in the family and wider society and restrictions on sexual
expression and reproductive freedom, to physical, psychological, sexual, economic and obstetric
violence, in all its different forms.7 Often, there was unprocessed anger related to these experiences.8

For a long time, my human rights work, motivated also by my experiences of patriarchal harms, was
fuelled partly by anger as well as by unprocessed grief related to my wounding. It took me some time
to understand that my activism alone cannot address my wounds, and that my wounds shape how I
engage in human rights work. I wanted to change the world partly to address my own unmet needs,

7 One way of classifying trauma is as personal and injustice trauma. According to this classification, injustice trauma refers
to a form of psychological distress resulting from experiences of systemic inequity or unfair treatment, while personal trauma
is understood to stem from individual action (see Maddox, 2023). In my opinion, this distinction is superficial, as personal
experiences are always framed by a broader social context. It has become clear that social inequality fosters trauma, and
hence should be understood as a public health issue, which requires societal responses and not only individual treatment (see
Gelkopf, 2018).
8 Anger is a common response to injustice. It helps us cope with stressful events by giving us the energy to keep going in the face

of adversity. But unprocessed anger can lead to many problems, both for us and for our communities (see US Department for
Veteran Affairs, 2010).
130 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

not always fully aware of these connections. Paying attention to the spiritual messages playing out
in my life, I started to understand that I can never heal my wounds through external work only,
particularly not through a dominant social paradigm that constantly (re)produces trauma through
the different systems of injustice and power disbalances. I began to understand that neglecting my
own healing was pushing me further into fighting, something I have been observing in human rights
activism more generally. In the many exchanges I have had with different women human rights
activists throughout my life, I have observed how often we are not fully aware of the role of our own
wounding in how we do our human rights work. To paraphrase Ðord-evi�, walking with an open wound
prevents us from moving forward in our causes (Oliviera and Ðord-ević, 2015, p. 43). Having
unprocessed anger keeps us in fighting mode.

the dualist, oppositional paradigm of fighting for

human rights
The well-accepted, if not dominant, phrase in describing human rights activism is ‘fighting for human
rights’.9 Indeed, the dominant approach to social justice has been defined as conflict orientated
(Fernandes, 2003) or oppositional (Keating, 2013). But history has shown that fighting is not conducive
to peace and justice; rather, fighting creates more fighting. As Thomas Merton has already argued:

the frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It
destroys the fruitfulness of our own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
(Merton, 1966, p. 73)

Moreover, fighting presupposes oppositional logics and the existence of perpetrators and victims. While
these concepts might be useful to describe the reality of suffering and human rights violations, they
also create certain problems. In the context of feminism, they might support rather than challenge the
gender binary of female victims / male perpetrators. Moreover, these concepts simplify women’s
experiences, overemphasising victimhood at the expense of agency, which has been a critique of some
feminist approaches (Schneider, 1993).

Furthermore, the focus on fighting highlights suffering and undermines the role of pleasure and joy
in activism. Very few scholars have examined the role and the importance of joy (Simmons, 2019)
and pleasure (brown, 2019) in social justice movements, even though these are the vital creative
forces that sustain our activism and help us imagine and build alternative futures. On the contrary,
these concepts and experiences have been seen as politically problematic in certain settings. As
Laleh Khalili (2015) has observed, resistance to pleasures has, in certain contexts, been seen as an
activist act. Hardship and suffering have been seen as an inherent part of human rights work, while
self-sacrifice and martyrdom remain important values for human rights activists.

In this framework, human rights activists become the martyrs/rescuers saving the victims from the
perpetrators.10 But the narrative of women in positions of privilege ‘rescuing’ their ‘less fortunate

9 This applies to women’s rights as well. If you enter this phrase into Google, you will see how this terminology is widely used by
different actors, including academics, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the United Nations.
10 For an experiential understanding of these roles through movement practice, I am indebted to Ya’Acov Darling Khan, a teacher

of Movement Medicine practice.

 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 131

sisters’, which in a global context has, inter alia, racial and colonial dimensions, is problematic and
has been subjected to critique (Mohanty, 1984; Kapur, 2002). Not only does this categorisation reflect
unequal power dynamics but it also undermines the agency of people. This is vividly demonstrated by
a participant in my research on sex work, where this dynamic is particularly played out. Asked about
radical feminists’ perspectives of sex workers as victims, Nina explained the problems with this
perspective:

The worst thing you could do is make the person a victim. If you are only a victim, you are stripped of … I don’t
know, humanity, of everything. […] People should be empowered in all, even if they were a victim of something
concrete in a specific situation. Let’s empower this person! (Nina, quoted in Radačić, 2017, p. 98)

In addition, the exclusionary categories of victims, perpetrators and rescuers obscure that these
are roles we all play at different moments11 and which we can consciously outgrow. To consciously
outgrow identification with these roles based on our different positionality in relation to suffering
is not to minimise the significance of personal and intergenerational trauma framed by unjust
social structures for our identity formation and social position(s), but it is to constantly open
ourselves to relating with others from a position of unity, rather than separation.

As Leela Fernandes (2003) argued, we cannot achieve transformative justice if our dominant
paradigm is one of conflict-based retributive justice and if what we are asking for are simply
demands based on identity, as this will foster separation and exclusion. Instead, we need to engage
in the process of disidentification, which involves both confronting the real effects of identities
(both disadvantages and privileges) and detaching from them, in respect to not only social
identities but all forms of ego-based attachments (ibid.). This requires us to base our identity in
spirit, which involves spiritual transformation.

However, the dominant, conflict-based paradigm of rights is focused only on political transformation.
Under the dominant framework, spirituality is separated from politics. It is still predominantly seen as
‘essentialist, escapist, naïve, or in other ways apolitical and backward thinking’ (Keating, 2008, p. 55).
But as Audre Lorde stated:

The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our
erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic—the sensual—those physical,
emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being
shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings. (Lorde, 2007, p. 56)

Exclusion of the erotics from politics and activism is linked to the predominance of rationality and mind
over intuition and body. The focus of the mainstream human rights movement is on changing political
power and social norms and structures through employment of rationality and intellect. The importance
of internal change and healing, which involves embodied practices, is neglected. Under this framework,
which over-values outer actions, the activist’s (well-)being is neglected.

11 Fernandes (2003) warns how easy it is to replicate power structures in social justice activism, and how we can all easily

attach to power.
132 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

the neglect of activists’ well-being

The well-being of social justice activists has until recently not been a topic of interest.12 This started to
change when recent studies identified the extent of trauma (both direct and vicarious), depression and
serious burnout in the human rights field.13 For example, a 2015 study related to the mental health and
well-being of 346 human rights advocates found that 19.4 per cent met the criteria for PTSD diagnosis,
18.8 per cent met the criteria for subthreshold PTSD and 14.7 per cent met the criteria for depression
(Joscelyne et al., 2015). As stated above, a significant number of people joining the field of social
change also have a history of childhood trauma, which shapes the way they identify with their work
(Barendsen and Gardner, 2004) and how they handle work-related trauma (Joscelyne et al., 2015).

Various kinds of trauma and burnout have a particularly high incidence in women’s rights fields, which
are often under-resourced and where the work takes place in high-risk environments. The study by
Cordero et al. (2023), for example, reports the following traumatic experiences that activists face
around the world: intimidation, surveillance, persecution, criminalisation, stalking, physical, sexual
and digital violence, including attempts on their lives, in addition to witnessing the trauma of
populations with whom they work. The problem is heightened among women activists experiencing
multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. In their comparative study of women-of-colour
activists in six European cities, Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Basel (2020, p. 3) exemplified how the context
in which marginalised activists work creates exhaustion: ‘it is the insidious ways in which austerity,
xenophobia and fascism operate in different contexts that evoke exhaustion’. Unlike many others who
define exhaustion as a problem that often leads to withdrawal from activism, these scholars indicate
that it can also be a moment of ‘rebirth of activism in different configurations’, acting as a ‘structure
of mutual recognition within precarious collectives [which] binds activists together’ (ibid., p. 7).

While mutual recognition and solidarity between ‘exhausted activists’ can indeed open space for
alternative political spaces, self- and collective-care practices (of different meanings and kinds in the
different specific contexts) are of great importance for building communities, countering exhaustion,
enhancing well-being and sustaining social-justice work. For example, the study by Cordero et al. (2023)
shows how care, which has many components related to digital, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
dimensions, is essential for many activists not only for their own well-being but also as a political act
that can destabilise power structures. In particular, the activists emphasise the importance of collective
creative spaces that can set the stage for the recognition of traumas and for mobilising healing
processes, at both the personal and collective level.

However, until now, little attention has been placed on healing and well-being in the human rights
field (Human Rights Defenders Hub, 2019), particularly outside of feminist movements. There is
limited space for self-reflection, contemplation and care in the human rights world, as the
emphasis is placed on doing. Moreover, many activists have expressed resistance to self-care

12 Whilewell-being does not have a single definition and means different things to different people at different points in time,
it can only have a holistic meaning, as referring to physical, emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual levels.
13 Open Global Rights, ‘Resilience as resistance: mental health and human rights’, https://www.openglobalrights.org/mental-

health-well-being-and-resilience-in-human-rights/ [last accessed 15 November 2022].

 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 133

practices, seeing them as self-indulgent acts that diverge attention from more important work
(Hernández Cárdenas and Tello Méndez, 2017).

But as the study by Jeff Severns Guntzel and Nora F. Murphy Johnson (2020) found, well-being inspires
well-doing. After engaging in an 18-month inner-development project, the participants—social justice
activists—reported not only that they felt better but also that they engaged more deeply with
communities, worked more collaboratively across silos and built or restored bridges, leading to more
holistic outcomes. This led the researchers to conclude that there is a connection between inner well-
being and the way social change happens: that systems change from the inside out. Supporting well-
being and self- and collective care therefore lies at the heart of effectively addressing social challenges
(Human Rights Defenders Hub, 2019; Severns Guntzel and Murphy Johnson, 2020; Cordero et al., 2023).

paradigm shift: caring connections based in the

understanding of our spiritual nature
The above findings suggest that we need a paradigm shift in human rights discourse and practice(s).
The current dualist, oppositional paradigm of self/other, inner/outer, spiritual/material, as well a focus
on the need to change the world that surrounds and is separate from the activist, not only undermines
activists’ well-being but also compromises a holistic approach. A holistic approach recognises our
interconnectedness and understands the importance of addressing our traumas through inner work and
healing (in addition to changing social structures). As AnaLouise Keating (2013, p. 3) has noted, the
current oppositional paradigm saturates us and limits our imaginations: ‘we define “self and society”
in antagonistic, conflict-driven terms that prevent us from obtaining a more ample awareness of the
realities of the universe and our connections in it’. Hence, we need a shift from conflict-based justice
approaches to transformational approaches, which include spiritual transformation (Anzaldúa, 2002;
Fernandes, 2003; Keating, 2013; Anzaldúa, 2015).

These proposals have gained new salience in this time of constant and multiple crises, as the deficiencies
of our system(s) have become fully exposed. It is becoming increasingly clear that our political and
socio-legal systems—based on individualistic, profit- and power(-over)-orientated motivations, which
degrade all that associated with feminine traits (including the Earth) and do not recognise our spiritual
nature—are no longer sustainable. We can no longer neglect our interconnectedness: what happens to
any one of us affects all of us.

a spiritual approach to human rights

A spiritual approach to human rights is based on this recognition of our interconnectedness, our inter-
dependence, of the same life at the core of all living beings, which motivates us to base our actions—
however small or big they are—on love and compassion, with a view to achieving the liberation of all
living beings from suffering related to social injustices and exploitation. As Keating (2013) explains,
spiritual activism at the epistemological level posits a metaphysics of interconnectedness and employs
relational modes of thinking; at the ethical level, it includes specific actions designed to challenge
individual and systemic forms of social injustice.
134 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

Centring our lives in our spiritual nature, in our life force, does not necessarily result in spiritual bypassing.
On the contrary, the recognition of our interdependence might motivate us even more to expose, challenge
and work to transform unjust social structures. The work of Gloria Anzaldúa (2002, 2015), Keating (2008,
2013) and Fernandes (2003) shows that spirituality can sustain and assist us in our efforts to transform
social injustices. As Anzaldúa has argued:

We have the capacity to recognise the ultimate unity and interdependence of all beings—somos todos un país
… You share a category of identity wider than any social position or racial label. This conocimiento motivates
you to work actively to see that no harm comes to people, animals, ocean—to take up spiritual activism and
the work of healing. (Anzaldúa, 2002, p. 558)

Importantly, a spirit-inflected perspective can give us a sense of agency and strength necessary for our
social justice work. Ana Castillo has written:

Acknowledgment of the energy that exists throughout the universe subatomically generating itself and
interconnecting, fusing, and changing … offer[s] a personal response to the divided state of the individual
who desires wholeness. An individual who does not sense herself as helpless to circumstances is more apt to
contribute positively to her environment than one who resigns with apathy to it because of her sense of
individual insignificance. (Castillo, 1994, p. 159)

While not resulting in the withdrawal from social justice work, spiritual approaches14 to human rights
and social justice call us to contemplate linkages between inner and outer peace, and to connect social
and personal, political and spiritual transformation. The spiritual approaches call us to apply the
principles of social justice in all our everyday practices and to act from love and compassion in our
interactions, constantly engaging in self-inquiry. If we take this seriously, ‘the question then becomes
not just what activists may need to do to successfully advocate for human rights but also who they need
to be and what qualities they need to embody in order to better cultivate the change that is sought’
(Sharp, 2021, p. 38).

The move from doing to being, as a part of spiritual transformation, is a significant one and requires
re-examining gendered assumptions about what is valued and important and our ideas about
independence and power. Moving from doing to being is a move from the head (associated with the
masculine) to the heart (associated with the feminine), where we—through our own inner gnosis—can
feel that we are interrelated. From this place, we relate with each other with care, from power within
(sourced in spirit rather than material circumstances of privilege) and not power over, and our actions
are for the benefit of all living beings.

This understanding of our nature as spiritual, interdependent, interconnected beings automatically

elevates the values of care in human rights and social justice and places well-being, self-care and

14 I use the plural to open up the space for a diversity of practices in different contexts by differentially situated people, as it is

not my aim to come up with the spiritual approach. I advocate inner gnosis rather than dogma. In that sense, this approach is
not to be confused with dogmatic religious approaches but it does not exclude a more mystic understanding of religions, with
which some social justice activists engage.
 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 135

collective care (care here is defined holistically to respond not only to our psychical, emotional, mental
and psychological but also spiritual needs) at the centre of human rights practice.

self-care, collective care and pleasure

While feminists’ work on care ethics has extended to the field of human rights and social justice (Held,
2006), the concept of self-care has not yet featured prominently in discussions of human rights and
feminism outside of some activists’ circles. On the contrary, in the human rights movement, self-care
has often been seen as an act of selfish, individualistic indulgence under capitalist conditions, which
diverts resources from the more important work of helping others. However, such an understanding of
self-care is narrow and misconceived, as we can only genuinely help and care for others when we care
for ourselves. If our actions are not based in (self-)care, they can be manipulative and oppressive, for
both us and those we care for/about. We cannot give if we are empty; in such cases the giving can be an
attempt to fill ourselves. We have to include our own mind-body-spirit in our caring for the world. This
is also what an understanding of our spiritual nature calls for.

The self-care approach advocated here is not to be associated (only) with the behaviours that
immediately make us feel better (like going to a spa or a self-development workshop, for those who can
afford it) and it is not connected particularly with any single practice, such as yoga or meditation.
Although it can involve different practices, including simple ones such as spending time in nature, it is
much more than a single practice: it is a path of listening and responding to our needs at the different
levels of our being—physical, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual—from a place of love and
compassion.15 This is not always easy. In my experience, it requires a lot of unmasking, which can be a
lonely path in the world when we are valued primarily for the masks we wear. It demands that we trust
ourselves and the Universe enough and care about ourselves enough to reject the practices that oppress
us and change them for the benefit of all living beings.

Our relationship with ourselves and our experience of the world is the base from which we relate to others,
from which we (co-)create the world. Hence, self-care is one of the most radical things we can do to
change the world. As shown above, there is now evidence that self-care practices have a significant
impact on wider communities. All of us whose work on social justice has led us on the path of self-inquiry
and self-change can testify to that.

But self-care and individual healing are not and cannot be divorced from a wider community
(Chamberlain, 2020). As Nakita Valerio (cited in Dainkeh, 2019) puts it, ‘shouting “self-care” at
people who actually need community care is how we fail people’. For Valerio (ibid.), community care
is ‘people committed to leveraging their privilege to be there for one another in various ways’ (ibid.).
While we have the power and responsibility to care for ourselves, we do so in community with others:
this is where both the injury and healing can occur. We are constantly relating to each other and can
never truly be healed while we are not all healed, hence we need to adopt a relational approach to

15 This is a multilayered process. For a multi-layered understanding of self-care as including support, orientation, motivation,

skills and behaviour, see Wyatt and Ampadu (2021).

136 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

human rights. As our problems are rooted in collective issues, we have a responsibility to support each
other while we work on addressing these issues. If we start from the understanding that we are all
interconnected, self-care and collective care become interlinked endeavours.

Historically, however, women have tended to focus on caring for others while neglecting self-care, in
line with dominant socialisation models. It is now time that we started caring for ourselves. This is not
an act of self-indulgence; rather, as Lorde (1988, p. 125) wrote, ‘it is self-preservation, and that is an
act of political warfare’. Hannah Coombes explains:

Self-care in the feminist sense is about protecting and preserving women’s mental, physical and emotional
wellbeing in a world that continuously exploits women’s labour with little rewards and is hostile to a number
of identities … It is about moving away from society’s predefined roles for women and pressures of capitalism,
and instead recognising and defining your own needs and working out how to meet them. Self-care is a form
of fight back, an insistence that personal meaning for women matters … (Coombes, 2021)

Self-care practices need to include connecting to and enhancing our pleasure, as it is from ecstasy
rather than suffering that we change the world.16 Pleasure, however, is not to be confused with capitalist
consumption; rather, it is connected to ‘a tapping into natural abundance that lives in us’, as adrienne
marie brown (2019, p. 8), one of the fiercest advocates of the power of pleasure in activism, writes. In
brown’s (ibid., p. 7) words, pleasure activism is ‘the work we do to reclaim our whole happy selves from
the impacts, delusions and limitations of oppression’. Attending to our pleasures and taking actions
from the place of ecstasy, which are also part of taking care of ourselves and our (many) communities,
are all the components of spiritual activism.

This is all interrelated: the shift to a relational perspective in the human rights field would automatically
result in spiritually orientated care practices in the different interconnected circles that activists and
communities inhabit. These might involve women’s (and men’s) circles,17 therapeutic or healing sessions
and workshops, conscious dance and movement practices, meditation and contemplation. They also
require organisational and institutional changes that address power imbalances, strenuous work
demands and other oppressive practices in the human rights fields (Chamberlain, 2020).

the path of healing and connecting to our erotic

power
In order to co-create new practices and institutions, we need to be willing to unlearn social conditioning
and to resist re-creating the injustices we are aiming to address. Our efforts should be aimed not (only)
at demanding rights under the current framework but also at transforming that framework, which
requires questioning it, decentring its power and dreaming a new framework.

16 For the understanding of ecstasy as a natural quality of life force with an innate power of change, I am indebted to the teach-

ings of Bruce Lyon.

17 For an account of the healing potential of the women’s circle, see Rodak (forthcoming).
 Ivana Radačić feminist review 136 137

We need to be ready to face and address our own traumas, if we are to stop continuing down the path of
suffering and transmission of trauma.18 We also need to get acquainted with our own shadowlands of
anger, hatred and resentment, so as not to project them onto others and play the game of victims,
perpetrators and rescuers. This is an act of self-care and self-responsibility, which might open a path
for different ways of relating with other human beings, bringing to the movement more collective care
practices. Attending to our wounds might open the space for the pure ecstasy of (one) life moving
through us, which might help us heal the separations, including the separation between our inner
feminine and masculine, which is a precondition of ending the gender wars. No change of laws or policies
alone can do it.

As Lorde explained, we need to move from suffering to connecting to our erotic power:

when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing
that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to
ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of
necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like
their only alternative in our society. (Lorde, 2007, p. 58)

This requires that we take the path of (self-)care and of healing and (re)creating communities of
care. What constitutes this will be different for different people. On my path, I have been guided by
my intent of understanding myself and the world better and bringing more balance to the masculine
and feminine relating (within and without), which has lately shifted to experiencing life, as it
constantly moves through me, in interrelation with others. I have found body-orientated integrative
psychotherapy, Kundalini yoga, meditation, tantra, conscious dance and shamanic practices
(including plant medicines) all helpful. I have witnessed in my own life the power of my intention
and have continuously played with it (I would call that a ritual). These practices are for me based in
a (spiritual) understanding of the ultimate reality as unity, held by the unifying force of love, where
the inner and outer worlds are interconnected. Hence, clearing our inner world from the distortions
of values reflected to us in the outer worlds, and imagining and intending an alternative reality,
particularly when practised in a community, helps us dream this world into being. As brown (2019,
p. 6) notes, our imagination is a ‘tool of decolonialisation for claiming our rights to share our lived
reality’. The concept of dreaming the world into being is not new; indeed, it is one of the core
concepts of different indigenous communities (see Mitchell, 2018; Topa and Narvaez, 2022).

An understanding of the interconnectedness of all life leads us to ‘unity consciousness’ and calls us to
heal separations. One such separation is between the mind and body,19 again linked to a masculine/
feminine dichotomy. Somatic embodiment as well as shamanic practices can help us challenge the
dominance of mind and rationality (overvalued as ‘masculine’ in patriarchal settings) and connect us to
the power of our erotics: ‘a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane,
firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling’ (Lorde, 2007, p. 53). These

18 By asking us to take responsibility for our trauma, I am not removing it from the social context. While psychotherapy

and healing alone are not going to change the social structures that produce trauma, they might help us challenge these
structures and to understand that this is done not only by doing but by being. For the importance of addressing pain, see
Mitchell (2018, pp. 55–75).
19 For the link between the body and mind, see, for example, Van der Kolk (2015).
138 feminist review 136 a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

practices connect us back to our bodies and our sexuality and open our hearts for joy, resilience and
hope. From this place, we can envisage a different world and we can start co-creating it with others,
from a place of deep inner peace and interconnectedness of knowing our spiritual nature. We can bring
care, pleasure and healing into our activism.

concluding observations
This article provides a critique of the current dualistic paradigm of human rights and the neglect of the
well-being of human rights activists. It offers a model for a more holistic spiritually orientated caring
approach to human rights. The article opens by discussing the motivations for women’s rights work, to
show how we carry a lot of traumas based in gender and other forms of injustices, which, if not attended,
could place us in a victim-persecutor-rescuer dynamic in the paradigm of fighting for human rights. It
shows how this paradigm supports dualisms, which further separates and is thus unable to achieve the
radical social transformation we desire. This paradigm also results in burnout and neglect of activists’
well-being. Following the proposals for more transformative, spirit-inflected approaches of Anzaldúa,
Keating and Fernandes, and taking into account promising practices in the women’s rights movement
around self-care and collective care, as well as my own personal experiences, the article calls for a
paradigm shift in human rights and offers a proposal for a spiritually orientated (self-)care approach
to human rights. This proposal is based on the recognition of our interconnected and interrelated
nature, the same ecstatic life force at the core of us. It calls for shifting attention to care, including
self-care. Self-care is not to be equated with self-indulgence, but rather with listening to and attending
to our needs at physical, psychological, emotional, mental and spiritual levels so that we can allow this
life force, rather than our limiting personalities, to lead us. This can create new worlds free of oppression
and social conditioning, where power is sourced within, rather than over, someone.

author biography
Ivana Rada�i�, PhD in law, is a scientific advisor at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar and the
former vice-chair of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls (UNWGDAWG).
Her interests are feminism, gender sexuality and law, and human rights (of women). Her current research
explores the links between human rights, well-being and spirituality, while her earlier scholarship
focused on sex work. Dr Rada�i� has published extensively in leading international journals and books,
and has taught at various universities in Europe, Central America, Australia and New Zealand. She has
also cooperated with NGOs on human rights research, training and litigation and has been involved with
drafting national human rights laws and policies. She worked at the European Court of Human Rights and
litigated women’s rights cases before it. In addition to her academic and activist work in these areas,
she is a body-orientated psychotherapy practitioner and a Kundalini yoga teacher. She has been leading
women’s circles and holding workshops on feminine archetypes.

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