Self-Care as a Spiritual Act
What comes to mind when you think of self-care? Is it a concept you embrace out of necessity? Perhaps something required when you reach your burnout point? Or a mandatory commitment to prevent exhaustion or illness? What if you made the choice to take a preventative approach? What if you started looking after your needs before you are forced to?
The specifics of what self-care entails will vary for each of us. For some, it might mean time alone, for others it could be going out with a friend. You might relish a massage, someone else might delight in reading a book. It doesn’t really matter how you do self-care, only that you make it a priority.
Often it seems that we are a culture that relishes in being busy. Always moaning about how much we have to do, perhaps with a tinge of pride and bit of poor me thrown in for good measure. The victim role does not serve us or anyone we care about.
Do you even know what you need to take care of yourself? Is it your body, your mind, or your spirit that needs tending to? Whatever you define as your self-care need is likely exactly what you need.
As women, especially those of us in mid-life, we are mainly focused on everyone else’s needs. It’s how we’re conditioned. More than likely we got the message that to do otherwise was selfish. To speak out was being bold.
Then, once we are no longer needed by our families or our jobs, we can be find ourselves empty and unsatisfied. Perhaps even depressed. It’s so uncomfortable for some women, they seek out other opportunities to be of service to everyone but themselves.
While the younger generations have made “me” more of a priority, are their self-care practices serving them or are they destructive? Is there too much emphasis on the outward appearances, consumerism, and distractions? A client coined this as “selfie-care”. That’s not the path to feeling whole either.
It’s fine to be nurturing, to be of service, to be kind. We just have to remember and make time to do it for ourselves.
To learn some self-care tips you can adopt, listen in to Louise’s recent webinar on Self-Care hosted by Heather Embree by clicking this link.
Louise Racine
Thirteen Moons Wellness
Offering space, events, products, and services to women who are ready to make their self-care a priority since 2001.