The term “self-care” didn’t exist 30 years ago, but it has become very popular in the last couple of decades.
In fact, it has become so popular, in many ways, the concept of self-care has become a stressor in of itself. It has become another thing you need to do. A billion dollar business formed around trying to tell and sell you what you need in order to feel better.
The self-care worlds’ favorite target, women.
As mothers we are told frequently about the importance of self-care, but often we adapt self-care that isn’t helpful to us either because we consciously buy into the idea that we should want it, or because it’s easier to just go with what’s being thrown at us than to sit and figure out the self-care we truly need.
However, in building up your resiliency as a mother, it is essential that you take the time to learn and accept who you are and what you need. Once you do this, true self-care can be found in prioritizing the bits that fuel you. Fuel that will give you the strength and energy to brave the title of mom.
Reframing the Concept of Self-Care
Excerpts from a blog post titled “This Is What ‘Self-Care’ REALLY Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths And Chocolate Cake.” By, Brianna Wiest
“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.” “It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution…” “[self-care] often takes doing the thing you least want to do. It often means looking at your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.” “It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.” “It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
Questions to ask in figuring out authentic self-care:
- Does it energize you? Does it help you take on your other responsibilities by freeing up mental or physical energy?
- How do you feel not only while, but after getting it done?
- Are you sure it’s for you? Careful not to mistake, trying to please others as something for yourself. This is easy to do, pleasing others can feel momentarily good; but, it’s not sustainable and it distracts from the goal of holding internal worth over external worth.
Things to remember:
- Self-care may change by the day, and it most certainly changes by the stage.
- Self-care might not be easy or glamorous, but when authentic and true to your, it’ll feel worth it.
- Completing self-care should provide lasting positive benefits. If benefits are temporary or later result in negative feelings, it was not authentic self-care.