Before self-care became a buzzword appropriated by consumerist culture and leisurewear, the concept was developed and spread by Black feminist activists, including the poet Audre Lorde, who wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” When Lesley Jackson, PhD, first came upon this concept, she found it powerfully resonant. Jackson is herself a mother, and she spent her early career in social work and leadership development. So she was all too familiar with the perils of positions where giving can be without end. She had firsthand experience of the way harms can calcify when healing isn’t part of the giving cycle. So she began thinking about self-care at a personal and scholarly level, and she enrolled in a PhD program where she would eventually write her 2017 dissertation, The Implications of Self-creation and Self-Care in Higher Education.
To this day, Jackson is fascinated by how self-care can transform students’ experiences of higher education. This took root with her own scholarship. “I really started to look at how the body is a messenger, how it is a tool, how it is a reflection giving us feedback,” she explains. The flip side of this realization was noticing how academic settings often prioritize cerebral pursuits and normalize burnout. Jackson realized that she wanted to spend her career envisioning and creating learning environments that honored integrative approaches which centered, holistic health and well-being and centered awareness and self-inquiry towards capacity building, learning and growth.
That work led Jackson to be hired as a founding core faculty member in Antioch University’s online Doctor of Education program. And in many ways her holistic approach to education continues to inform her leadership in the program—and this record led to her promotion this year to serve as Chair of the EdD.
Leading a New Program at Antioch
When Jackson first arrived at Antioch University, so much was happening both inside Antioch and in the wider world. The COVID-19 pandemic began mere months before the EdD program’s launch in May 2020. And just as the program was launching, George Floyd was murdered by a policeman and Black Lives Matter protests swept across the United States, denouncing police brutality and the pervasive presence of systemic racism. It was a time of activism and outrage and possibility—and a rich moment in which to launch a program that aims to prepare educators to reform and transform our educational systems.
“There was this beautiful swath of interest and all of these beautiful minds coming into this place,” she reflects, “but tensions were high, and shields were up.” Jackson drew on her background as an educational consultant, a professor, and an administrator in Student Affairs at several higher education institutions to support the first cohorts of individuals in this program that had been designed to grapple with issues of systemic racism and social justice within the field of education.
The EdD program attracts students with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences into its eight specializations, which range from Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education to Critical Pedagogy to Environmental and Sustainability Education and beyond. The inaugural cohort that started in 2020 fully embodied this diversity.
It did not surprise Jackson that the turbulent social landscape affected learning environments. The longstanding dearth of conversations around well-being and self-care meant that many students didn’t have the tools to navigate the myriad of feelings that accompanied life in a period of continuous crisis. As Jackson explains, “Tempers were short, and anxiety was high.”
On more than one occasion, Jackson began meeting one-on-one with students, often giving extra assistance to students who were considering leaving the program. Jackson says, “Because of my centeredness in terms of embracing a space holistically, when folks were like, ‘I’m out of here,’ I would say, ‘Let’s have a talk.’” Jackson sees this impulse as a big part of why conversations about self-care are so important. As she puts it, “Self-care also extends to the care of and for others. When you learn to have compassion for yourself, it’s also easier to extend that to other people.” She took these concepts and infused them into her coursework and advising.
The first course that students took when the EdD program launched in 2020 was a doctoral writing class taught by Jackson. Recognizing that the words “doctoral” and “writing” could elicit an almost reflexive shutting down for some students, Jackson invited students to begin this process from a place she refers to as the “joy of inquiry.” She would say to her students, “Let’s start with joy. Let’s start with curiosity. Let’s start with what you are passionate about. What really fires you up?”
A centering question that Jackson positions in her work is, “What is yours to do?” This serves as a reminder to focus on purpose rather than external expectations. Curiosity and inquiry and a commitment to asking questions that unravel beliefs continue to guide Jackson in her personal, communal, and professional life. And they are particularly important as she rethinks and re-imagines how self-care can upend inherited models that lead to burnout, illness, and breakdown. Instead, she pushes for us to practice different ways of showing up for ourselves and others. “Education is a doorway for folk to walk through,” she says. “Not only for the betterment of their life and to make meaning of the world but also their own self-expression, their own self-authorship, and access to different ways and viewpoints.”
Curiosity and Transformation
Jackson grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She was that kid who zestfully awaited the start of the school year—because it meant meeting new people, asking pressing questions, and encountering information that expanded her mind. As a child, she anticipated the ritual quiet of Saturday mornings, when she would settle in with a book at the start of the day. “Saturday morning, when the house was quiet, and I didn’t have any chores to do,” Jackson says. “I could just read, and it felt like I could move beyond my street in my neighborhood… I could literally transport myself to a different place, and, at the same time, I could learn things.”
Today, Jackson never leaves the house without a book in her hand. She still feels awe at the way literature can let you encounter new perspectives and sometimes transform your mind and even change your circumstances.
In the fall of 1986, Jackson stood in the register’s office at Michigan State University as a freshman, flipping through a course catalog. She knew with decisive certainty that she didn’t want to study a number of different subjects, but that still left too many enticing fields of thought for a curious mind. She ended up nurturing this place of inquiry—of wanting to grapple with a question that had been gnawing at her. One such question she had been ruminating on was, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” She ended up double majoring in psychology and sociology, and by the time she finished her degree, her double major had affirmed what her intuition knew: she preferred transdisciplinary approaches to thinking, her mind naturally considered questions through multiple angles, and she couldn’t help but consider the endless complexities of the self and society and how these relate to each other. Transdisciplinary thinking became the way she moved through the world. As she says, “Why limit yourself to walking through one door when you can step through many doors?”
After finishing her undergraduate studies, Jackson worked in Student Affairs at Michigan State University. During this time, her perspective on the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people,” shifted. Jackson assisted students as they navigated aspects of their lives that were beyond their direct control. Instead of dwelling on the why, Jackson became intrigued by the how. “Life is still happening, and I was so very curious about that,” explains Jackson. “How are we helping people to navigate these spaces? How do we move from a more cognocentric perspective to recognize that there’s a lot more going on for folk.”
Stepping away from cognocentric perspectives meant engaging in more holistic conversations that acknowledged all of the layers and experiences that a person brought with them into any environment. These conversations eventually led Jackson to the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she enrolled in the PhD in Transformative Studies, which weaved together intellectual, philosophical, cultural, and spiritual inquiry.
But she ran into a problem: many of the concepts she found herself drawn to, like the notion that beingness transcends human individuality, were most typically finding expression and being explored in spiritual and religious texts and contexts. Integrating these ideas into higher education proved to be a challenge—and one that has continued through the rest of her career. As Jackson explains, “I had problems having conversations like this, because people want you to name a theory. If you start talking about spirituality or sacredness, there’s a tendency for people to go, ‘Oh, that’s soft and fluffy.’”
Undeterred, Jackson has worked translating these ideas and concepts into different nomenclatures and frameworks, in an attempt to navigate the reflex to dismiss what isn’t known or easily understood. This has come naturally— Jackson’s inclination towards transdisciplinary thinking means she is well versed at moving across different fields of thought.
A Transdisciplinary Approach to Education that Embraces Contradictions
The EdD program, with its eight specializations, is characterized by a transdisciplinary curriculum that aligns closely with Jackson’s own approach to learning. “My focus has always been these contradictions of the person in the self and society, the internal versus the external, the mind versus the body,” says Jackson. Delving into these contradictions, Jackson embraces transdisciplinary approaches where the mind, body, and spirit are deeply interconnected. By treating them as interconnected, she supplants stark contradictions with the intricacies and specificities of context.
Jackson steps into her many roles with what she calls her three loves: education, psychology, and spirituality. Recently, she taught a course on “Social Justice Practice and Theory.” This was a nourishing experience in many ways. She says, “For me, it was important to talk about justice and love—to bring that into the doorway—because there’s a lot of hurt and pain and grief and anger, and justifiably so. And yet, there’s still love and joy. There’s still care, compassion, humility, and that sacred piece of wanting to be connected—that’s what we’re fighting for.”
This approach suffuses even the way Jackson speaks, as she frequently turns a concept on its head with the words “and yet.” These two words embody the spirit of continuous inquiry rooted in curiosity. They are the opposite of a statement staking a definitive claim.
This refrain of “and yet” gestures to a way of thinking that allows Jackson to acknowledge that there can be pain and hurt in students, and yet there is also still love and joy. People are humans, and yet they are also beings. Students are individuals, and yet they also belong to communities. There is an internal world, and yet it rubs against an external world. “And yet” is a way of exploring and embracing the complexities of life, of the self, and of society. And yet, with this turn of speech and all of her work, Jackson also asks her students, colleagues, and all of us to challenge the status quo and keep building towards a more just world.
