I’ve realized something enormous about self-care. I was talking to my friend Jaci about how I’ve been feeling a bit off lately. Trying to wrangle these new-to-me emotions under control isn’t easy (and of course, I don’t need to control them–I just need to be present with them, that’s the point). (For those who missed it, I quit drinking 4.5 months ago. Life is better but very different.)
She said, “What are you doing for self-care?”
I said, “Eating ice cream!”
“Okay.”
“Eating a LOT of ice cream.” What I didn’t say but obviously made clear by my face was that the day before I’d had, in fact, four sundaes. Not four scoops of ice cream. Four full sundaes. Hot fudge, whipped cream, the works. One for each meal plus a snack! (To be fair, we’d bought ice cream for my birthday party and then forgotten to serve it, and it was my birthday week. #rationalizations)
“That’s not self-care.”
Ooooh. She was right. Overindulging in something that should be a treat wasn’t self-care. I felt so busted.
But isn’t that what we do when we want to take care of ourselves these days? We eat something we would normally need to rationalize? Or we buy something we don’t need? Or we go to bed and stay there for a full day?
Hmmm.
Those kinds of things have never felt right to me, even though I’ve frequently called them self-care.
Sure, taking a hot bath is self-care, as is reading and resting.
But what about doing difficult things like the bills? Or quitting drinking? Or telling the absolute truth all the time, without lying to yourself or others?
As Brianna Wiest says, “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.”
By Wiest, This is what self-care really looks like.
Me, I’m going to put my feet up on the couch and read Educated, because I’ve been working without a break for 9 hours now. I’m tired and now I’m taking care of myself. Here I go.
