Let’s stop making ourselves wrong for our Self-care Routines
So, I've been noticing something happening on social media lately, that I feel compelled to chat with you about…
Pull up a seat, I'm serving up a biiiit of tough love.
The online space is always crowded with everyone’s best intentions at the start of the year. And this year, more than before, I’m noticing how the idea of “That” self-care routine has become super popularising. We see gorgeous girls, drinking their fabulous green juice, in their perfect monochromatic workout sets, and perfectly minimalist apartments, going to the gym and taking walks. Now, I’m not hating on this. In fact, some days, I am doing some of those things too…
And this is exactly why I’m talking about it…
I feel like we’re making each other wrong for having a self-care ritual that looks different from our own. And in the process, making ourselves wrong for the routines we have.
Let’s take our mothers for example. If you’re a Gen X or relatively older Millennial, you probably grew up with a Baby Boomer parent, or even a Great generation parent, who appeared to never make time for themselves.
I certainly held this opinion of my own mother who worked all her life, raising 3 kids, being a wife, a boss, and the primary caretaker to an aging parent.
But, as I’ve started coming into my own self-care identity (yes, I believe we all have an identity around how to make time for ourselves), I started to question whether this was true; is it true that I had no role modeling around self-care?
And I’ve concluded that in fact, it is not true.
See, I grew up watching my mom be all those things. But I also remember her doing all these things too:
She ran 10ks
She finished a degree in her 30’s
She experimented with starting her own business.
She worked part-time when she chose to be more present at home when my brothers were very young.
She made her own beauty masks & face oils (and still does)
And has bought almost every kind of herbal tea, face-beating apparatus and body contouring cream, and tool you can think of
She took (and still does) an hour bath every night with candles & aromatherapy
She cooked the most nutritious & delicious food for us growing up
She and her besties went out for coffee dates and had wine nights
She and my dad went out to dinners and dances with other couples all the time (and still do)
And as we got older, and weren’t home as much, she spent some Friday nights with the TV all to herself, binging Hallmark movies in her PJs with a huge bowl of popcorn
So, it’s not that she made no time for herself, it’s just that the WAY in which she engaged in her self-care looked different from how I engage in mine. Her HOW and my HOW are different. And, just because she wasn’t journaling or going to therapy or spending her mornings on her yoga mat with a macha, doesn’t mean she wasn’t taking care of herself.
I think we’ve gotten a bit judgy about what we believe self-care is. Don’t even get me started on how I feel this further contributes to the trust gap between women getting wider & wider - that’s a story for another day.
I believe we’ve started getting a bit defensive about our own care routines because we feel like they don’t look like what we’re seeing other people do. There might even be a bit of shame there. And possibly a bit of jealousy.
Defensive that whatever our care routine is, is all we have the capacity for right now
Shameful that we’re somehow ineffective as “modern women" for not being able to do what we see others doing
Jealous that other women get to do some things we wish we could be doing
But here’s the million-dollar question: who is to say what makes a practice a self-care practice and what doesn’t?
Because self-care is not about WHAT you do, it’s about HOW you feel doing it, and the after-effects of that on the rest of your day or week.
The point of self-care is that:
It is for the self. Therefore, only YOU can really know what makes your SELF feel cared for. It’s totally personal. And totally unique
It is meant to nourish you. And nourishing looks like many things. It’s why there are 7 (some say 9) types of self-care. For everything from the physical to the spiritual to the financial
And the clincher is that our self-care routines will change. Because what feels nourishing today might not be the same in 3 months’ time. A year from now you might have older kids, a new job, or not be working full time and all that can change the self-care you require and the self-care you have the capacity for.
So, maybe our mothers DID know something about self-care after all, it just looked different for the season they were in. And maybe “that girl” on Instagram's routine looks more luxurious to yours because she’s in a different season to you too.
The start of the year is tough enough as it is for most of us. It’s a challenging financial time, it’s a challenging time for our mental well-being, our motivation, our stamina, and our flexibility to change. Adding load shedding to that, and, well…damn.
The idea of an effective self-care routine through the lens of social media can often be more threatening to our well-being than helpful. Because it too often focuses on the WHAT everyone is doing and not the HOW those things make them feel.
Let’s stop making each other wrong for the practices we engage in and have time for. And let’s stop making ourselves wrong for what we’re able to find time for, in whatever season we find ourselves in.
xxx
