I talk a lot about self care on this blog—although I admit I make an over-the-top effort to avoid using those actual words. I’m hesitant, if not reluctant, to ever write about the act of self care because I shudder at the risk of surrendering to what’s become an Instagrammable trend. On a surface level, self care has become a consumer-driven marketing ploy that swears by a product that will deliver instantaneous feelings of rest and restoration.
At its core, self care is the daily practice of honoring your body, emotional needs, and boundaries while cultivating a world wherein those voices can be heard. In my experience, surface-level self care tends to drown out the gentle whispers of authentic self care. I’m a huge fan of this article by Brianna Wiest where she points out that self care is usually an un-beautiful thing.
It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.
A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.
True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.
And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.
The afraid me wants to hide behind a list of 25 ways to practice self care and tell you about my favorite beauty products and nightly skincare routine. I’d love to tell you about a self-care routine that includes weekend getaways, facials, magazines, wine and Gilmore Girls. And I do believe those things, should they fill your heart, are necessary elements of quick-start self care but I’m finding more and more that the kind of self care that I need is more long term, complex and complicated—the kind that will never make it on to any Instagram feed. But that’s another post for another day.
The truth is, those things we tend to identify with as “self care” are actually not self-care practices, they are self-care products—and there is a difference. A product cannot hand you self care; I have yet to see a product that comes with a “self care included” stamp. The self care comes from the why. Throwing on a facial mask and pouring yourself a glass of wine is not self care. Taking care of your skin to honor the relationship you have with your body and untangling your mind at the end of the day is self care. See the difference? A product helps practice self care but the why behind the practice is what actually delivers the care of self.
If you do want to hear all about my favorite self-care products, I’m happy to tell you all about it, starting with the Beautycounter detoxifying clay mask I’m wearing below. If you want to see how I’m re-teaching myself self care, you’re going to want to check out the quotes below. They’re changing everything for me. And if you want to hear about how self care forcibly turned into tough love for me, you’re going to want to stay tuned for next week’s post When Self Care Gets Hard.
Magazine: Real Simple. Wine: Moscato. Facial mask: Beautycounter No. 3 charcoal mask. Half-hearted attempt at top knot: Yours truly.
“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
“You aren’t doing “nothing” when you choose to put your well-being first. In fact, this is the key to having everything.” ― Brittany Burgunder
“Taking care of myself doesn’t mean ‘me first.’ It means ‘me, too.” ― L.R. Knost
“I lied and said I was busy. I was busy; but not in a way most people understand. I was busy taking deeper breaths.
I was busy silencing irrational thoughts. I was busy calming a racing heart. I was busy telling myself I am okay. Sometimes, this is my busy and I will not apologize for it.” ― Brittin Oakman
“It’s a beautiful thing to have lungs that allow you to breathe air and legs that allow you to climb mountains, and it’s a shame that sometimes we don’t realize that that’s enough.”
“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits. Anything that kept me small. My judgment called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.”
“It’s important to keep your feelings and your self worth in different places, because when your feelings get hurt, it shouldn’t change how you view yourself.”
“If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.”
“Sometimes loving yourself will mean un-loving someone else.” -Dells Hicks-Wilson
“Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.” ― Shauna Niequist
“In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments.” ― Shauna Niequist
“And don’t worry: no won’t always be the word you use most often. I hate that for a season, no had to be the answer to almost everything. But over time, when you rebuild a life that’s the right size and dimension and weight, full of the things you’re called to, emptied of the rest, then you do get to live some yes again. But for a while, no is what gets you there.” ― Shauna Niequist