A note from Zarina Ahmad, Co-director, Wen
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 – a reminder that our inner wellbeing matters, even as the world feels like it’s on fire. This spring is the driest on record in parts of Europe. In the U.S., hard-won diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are being systematically dismantled. The UK government continues to fall short on climate targets. And in Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe unfolds, with unbearable loss and deep injustice. For those of us committed to justice, especially through a feminist lens, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, helpless, and exhausted. It’s ok to not be ok… you’re not supposed to be ok during a genocide.
How do we stay emotionally afloat when the very structures we’re trying to change are actively worsening?
Feminism teaches us that the personal is political. That means our burnout, our grief, our anxiety—they’re not just private burdens, but symptoms of systems designed to extract and exhaust. As Audre Lorde powerfully said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Anxiety often comes from the tension between urgency and capacity, and it can feel impossible to sustain ourselves and our groups through incredibly stressful and distressing times.T he world needs us, but we are finite beings. Recognising this paradox is the first step toward compassionate activism. Considering what actions are the most impactful and focusing our energy towards those, not acting for action’s sake.
We need to find ways to personally and collectively honour emotions in our activism. We need to be able to see ourselves, and one another, not as parts of a machine, but as co-creators of another world. As feminists, we know that collective care is as crucial as direct action. Mutual aid, emotional check-ins, and joy amidst sorrow—these aren’t distractions from “real” work; they are the work.
In times like these, hope can feel foolish. But as the writer Rebecca Solnit reminds us, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.” Hope is not blind optimism. It is fuel for resistance.
We also need to resist the culture of constant output. Rest is not giving up; it’s strategising for the long haul. Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, writes, “You are not a machine. Stop grinding. Rest.” Rest becomes a form of refusal—of capitalism, of burnout culture, of the idea that our worth is tied to our productivity.
So we breathe. We cry. We show up. And we rest – not because the fight is over, but because we are worth preserving.
This month, let’s remind ourselves: good mental health is not a luxury in activism—it is the ground we stand on.
Zarina Ahmad, Co-director, Wen
Zarina is an expert in equalities and climate change, increasing participation of under-represented groups in environmentalism. She was named as one of the top 30 influential women contributing to the environment and sustainability by BBC Woman’s Hour.
