How to Take Care

“A healing book for the world weary and traumatized, the over-burdened & under-mothered. This elegantly illustrated and inspired collaboration has a cure on every page. Hilarious and brave, tender and wise. Buy this book for yourself, and anybody else who needs a dang break.”—Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry, Lit, and Art of Memoir“Entering the world of this book—and it truly feels like a world, lushly illustrated, radiating tenderness and honesty—feels like sitting by a window and talking with a bighearted friend who also happens to be funny as f-ck, and eating hot fudge sundaes while a rainstorm rages outside. The sky is dark, and the flood might be coming, but the air is bristling with candor and compassion, just like these pages, which are full of hard-won insights attuned to the body, alive to the soul, and always aware of their entwinement. Something in this book will crack open a window in your life, I promise you—to let in the smell of the rain, the cold moonlight, the snow under streetlamps, the dawn.“—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams“With warmth and compassion, Williams and Novotny have created a reassuring, loving, and essential guide to taking care. If, like me, you are sure you were absent the day they handed out the life manuals, it’s here now. You will love this book, but even better, this book will love you back.“—Elizabeth Crane, author of This Story Will Change”How to Take Care has the feeling of cracking open a wise auntie’s grimoire in that it is both referential and ancestral—a collection of hard-earned knowings, lovingly compiled. My heart beams thinking of this timeless book being passed down from hand to hand, kitchen to kitchen, generation to generation.“—Brittany Carmona-Holt, birthworker, educator, and author of Tarot for Pregnancy: A Companion for Radical Magical Birthing Folks”How to Take Care feels like a comfortable cup of tea with your wise but hilarious friends. These warm, bite-size offerings of healing make doable that ever illusive idea of self-care. They deftly weave personal experience, clinical expertise, and curiosity, providing us with hopeful resources to honor the past and move confidently into our futures.“—Rebecca Feldman, midwife, psychiatric nurse practitioner and psychotherapist

Erin Williams is the author and illustrator of six books, including Commute- An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame and the Big Activity Book series. Her work has appeared in MoMA Magazine, The Believer, Salon, BuzzFeed, and Synapsis, among other publications. She has more than ten years of experience in data analysis and scientific research, and has published multiple peer-reviewed papers on healthcare disparities and inequity in medicine.

Kate Novotny is a registered nurse certified in obstetrical care. She is also a parent, a poet, and a trained birth and postpartum doula. She has been present at the births of thousands of babies, at home, at birth centers, and at hospitals. Since 2014 she has hosted an inclusive social media platform called the Taproot Doula for parents, healthcare and birth workers, and anyone who seeks to become more trauma-informed.

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