A Quick Guide To Self-Care

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Often, in my self-care talks, I remind people that self-care isn’t just about green smoothies. It’s about caring for yourself as a whole being, including (but not limited to): getting solid sleep, setting boundaries in relationships, taking time to play and be creative, being nice to yourself and civic/environmental engagement. 

But, it’s not NOT about the green smoothies either. I’m taking a spring self-care class with Lauren Kaneko-Jones LAc, because I needed help reestablishing my self-care practices after this last period of pregnancy and postpartum. 

Wow, it’s so helpful! Lauren is reminding me of what I already know - eating/drinking lots of greens is important during this spring transition - and inspiring me with new self-care from the Chinese medicine tradition. 

Now, I’m doubly glad I offer self-care support as my work. I see how much we all need it, even those who are teaching it to others. As always, I’m amazed by how much energy refocusing in on my self-care gives me. I’m finding it way easier to hang with the changes (like one less daycare day this week) and to show up for what I believe in (I went to a talk on zero waste loving last night, so provocative and important- more on this soon!). And now, back to my morning smoothie... 

PS - I have a couple of spaces left in my spring Self-Care 101 group that starts April 22nd. Go here to learn more and apply.
 

Latest from Instagram:

Amazing salad and sipping broth from @teaism_dc, which I enjoyed with the inspiring @manishatare as we talked about the wonders and challenges of letting your intuition lead (interesting that apparently Jeff Bezos does the same?). I’ve had a mantra running through my head of late: I will not let parenting get in the way of my self-care. And then right after: I will not let self-care get in the way of my parenting. Then I try another: I will not let my concerns about our society get in the way of my growth as an entrepreneur. Right after: I will not let my growth as an entrepreneur get in the way of my concerns about society. To me, this means that I will not let my one area of my life compensate for my resistance to growth in another. If I have self-care blocks, I will work directly and gently with those. If I’m struggling in a relationship, I won’t hide myself in my career, and I won’t hide in a relationship when I am afraid to take action at work (Etc, etc, etc). If I let resistance win in one are of my life, all the other parts suffer because those other parts become compulsive. I’ve definitely gotten this way in my self-care before - rigid to the point where it felt unhealthy. This brings me back to the Buddhist slogan: the way we do anything is the way we do everything. If we are coming from fear, which is what resistance really is, all of my pursuits will feel narrow and ungrounded. If I’m coming from love - and I think we need ample amounts of love to take the risk of growth in any area of our lives - there’s an expansive, connected quality to everything I do. Of course, I don’t think we ever make the fear go away, but a firm commitment to moving through our personal blocks transforms our relationship with fear - not just for us but for the world around us. Want to know more about this kind of visionary leadership? Join my free webinar: “Turning Self-Care into Visionary Leadership” on 9/24 @ 3pm. Link in bio! What a week! We celebrated Jonah’s first birthday with a festive little luau and family coming to visit for the weekend. Predictably, the birthday boy burst into tears when we sang him happy birthday, and then recovered enough to enjoy his first big hit of processed sugar. All in all, I thought we celebrated fully, which is always a good feeling. And then everyone went home and we went back to daily life. After the ecstasy, the kale! (See third pic in series.) Learning to appreciate the mundane of life has been big for my self-care. Before, after a celebration with loved ones, it used to feel like a let down to go back to regular eating or going to bed early. I think that’s because I didn’t really enjoy nurturing myself -made me feel more alone to focus on myself. So I’d fill up my calendar so I didn’t have enough time to take care of myself. Now it’s different. I love a good party, but I also love that moment when everyone leaves and I can change my clothes and reflect on everything. I love washing a batch of kale and then figuring out how to make it into a simple dinner. Caring for myself has helped me to appreciate my own company, which in turn nurtures my relationships. It also helps me realize that I can intentionally create space for things that matter. This week, that meant phone banking for Ayanna Pressley (so excited about her win!) and creating a free webinar for how to turn your self-care into visionary leadership on September 24th (sign up link in bio). Little acts can add up, as long as we make space for them in life. This is self-care in action!
The vulnerability of parenting feels hardest to talk about. As I mentioned in a previous post, both my love and fear for Jonah is incredibly intense. I’m a person who likes to be in control. Ever wonder why I’ve always been so keen on running my own business? Yup, I like it to be a certain way. I can probably trace this back to my own childhood and needing this sense of control to feel safe in the world. Learning authentic self-care helped me to experience a different kind of safety - one rooted in kindness and surrender. Slowly, I’ve worked to let go of control and trust the flow of my own life. Having Jonah required the deepest layer of surrender yet. It’s asked me to live in the discomfort of my vulnerability (of both my fear and my gratitude). Over this past year, I’ve let go of so much of my ego-based striving and found that underneath my hustle were all these super tender parts of me that needed love. Loving the parts of me that I would rather hide helps me to love Jonah more fully (and vice versa!). It’s a hard, beautiful, transformative process (so very much inspired by the work of @brenebrown). What scares me most about our dominant culture is that we are terrified of our own vulnerability. We spend most of our time and energy so that we don’t have to touch these hurting places and I know this affects our relationships, our parenting, our own authenticity. To me, it’s revolutionary to become willing to feel it all and most definitely a signal of our strength. The more we can do it as individuals, the more we can honor that vulnerability in others, especially populations and communities that are more vulnerability than us (people of color, immigrant, LGTBQ, religious minority). This is how the inner work leads to the outer work. This is how we hand a calmer, kinder world down to the next generation. This guy! As part of the motherhood series I’m posting this week, I of course want to talk about partnership. Many of you already know this, but Micah and I were only dating for two months when we got accidentally pregnant. There would be so many situations where this would be no bueno, however it didn’t feel that way to either of us. We both had such a strong “yes” that we wanted to have this child and decided to just figure out the rest as we went along. As we move toward celebrating the two year anniversary of our first date next month, I’m going to say that we’ve done a decent job of figuring it out. I feel so lucky and grateful to have Micah as a partner and co-parent. This doesn’t mean things are perfect. We still have our fights and awkward moments and petty resentments. However, we also have nourishing routines/rituals, a very good sense of humor, and both are quite dedicated to our own personal development. Currently, I’m so proud that Micah just took a new job at Vera Institute for Justice where he is working to better our saddening criminal justice system in the USA. Each relationship is unique, but I do think our secret to having a thriving partnership is that we continue to encourage each other’s spiritual growth. It’s tough work to hold space for the hard parts of growth in someone you love. I want to fix it so those places don’t get triggered in me. Yet, by showing up, keeping faith, sacrificing myself, for Micah and our family, from time to time is how I grow too. Of everything we are giving Jonah, I think this lesson might be the most important: we need each other to grow, and in that growth, we all become more liberated. This is me, one year into motherhood. (Also, this is me after another fantastic haircut from @jeanjekal 💜). Yesterday I promised more on mama self-care and I want to start by saying this is just what works for me, based on my needs, proclivities and resources. Self-care is rarely one-size-fits all, and that’s both the beauty and the challenge of it! So for me, my self-care has evolved over these past 12 months. After giving birth, self-care meant rarely leaving my bed for two weeks and allowing others to take care of me even when I wanted to do it all myself. Later, self-care meant giving myself grace as I rockily adjusted back to working again, and making time for long baths while Jonah was at daycare when it all felt like too much. Now that I’ve found a pretty good rhythm for my work days (Jonah is home with me twice a week), my self-care consists of a lot of meal planning (three good meals a day is so grounding for me), and some creative multitasking to meet a few needs at once. I love talking to friends on the phone while strolling with Jonah and folding laundry while listening to a podcast (recently love “Unruffled” by Janet Landsbury - respectful parenting revolution!). Taking time with my partner Micah is also essential (more on this tomorrow). I’m also always working to let myself feel complex feelings, engage in difficult conversations, and show up for social justice in the ways I know how (and investing in education so I can learn how to show up more). All of this is quite a balance between myself and others, between joy and grief, between allowing and resisting. It’s a intricate dance, and although I always feel pretty challenged by the art of being a human, I’m very happy to be alive and caring for my people and helping envision the next stage of our world. Jonah turns one on Sunday! To celebrate, I want to share more about motherhood here this week. Lately, I’ve been eager to talk about different topics - racism, classism, empathy - partly because they are so necessary for this moment and partly because I don’t want my life and work to be centered in motherhood. However, a year after Jonah was born, I see my ability to share on these difficult subjects in direct correlation to the softening of myself that’s happened since becoming a mother. I don’t want to romanticize parenting - my tenderization has been joyful but also oh so painful - and I think this softening can happen in many different ways for different people. I just know for me, my heart changed when I saw the “+” sign on the pregnancy test (surprise!). I just LOVE Jonah so much. I am just so AFRAID of something happening to him. I now relate to how many other people feel about their children and how this makes us do so many noble and terrible things in the world. Raising Jonah through the ups-and-downs of this first year (almost two, if you count growing him in my womb) has awakened a much bigger compassion in me. I feel more pain, but I think I suffer less. I delight more in my days. I’ve taken on this glorious and unnerving weight of love. This reality reminds me often of how much I have to lose and how much so many of us have lost. It’s a groundless place to live - as Pema Chodron might describe it - but if I’m practicing enough self-care, living in this space keeps me ever so close to my heart. (More on the motherhood self-care piece tomorrow!) Here’s my little family going to protest against white supremacy last weekend. Protesting with a baby is complicated but so worth it. It felt so good to be in the crowd with Jonah and use my presence to say “No, that’s not what I believe. This is not the world I want to pass down to my child.” I’m not sure if you know this about me (I posted a series on my history a few years back), but I’m first generation American on my dad’s side. My grandparents were refugees from Poland after WWII. Their homes were destroyed, most of their families were killed, and my grandparents were separated for years - not knowing if the other was alive and losing their daughter in that period - while my grandfather was in a Siberian detention camp. They had my father in a displaced persons camp in London after the war, and immigrated with him to the US when he was five. My history is largely formed by fleeing violence as a refugee, which just adds another layer when I watch children separated from their families. I try to imagine what it must be like to leave your whole world behind, not because you want to but because you and your children will die otherwise. I try to imagine the horrors of the journey, how terrifying and exhausting it must be, especially with children. Then, I think of the vulnerability of arriving and trying to explain your situation to officials and care for your children who so tired and confused, and then having them taken away in this exhausted state. I mean, really? People do this? Can you imagine the fear of not knowing where your child is going? My drive to protect Jonah is so strong. It is so hard for me to imagine having him taken from me, but I must work to feel it all because it is happening to people in my country. It’s an immense privilege to be born Im the United States and be white and never have to worry about Jonah being taken from me. I want this for all families. We might feel powerless to change the larger system, but we are completely capable of cultivating our empathy and sharing that with the people around us and listening to those who hold less power than us and continuing to show up for the world we want to pass onto all children. One of the biggest changes of late is that I’m getting my toes done again! Before I had my son Jonah, I had a biweekly date to get a full mani/pedi. Then, I got pregnant and stopped because of the chemicals and expense. Now, I’m getting just my toes done and when I look down, it makes me happy. Obviously, pedicures are probably the most superficial layer of self-care, but I think it’s a good example of letting ourselves ebb and flow with our self-care as we grow with life. Another example of growth is that this month marks 10 years of me being an entrepreneur. Yup, that’s ten years of making my own paycheck, doing things as ridiculous as chasing dogs with treats to take their pictures and as exciting as leading a yoga retreat in Bali. If you asked me last year about this success, I would have mentioned being a hard worker. This year, however, I’ve been doing some powerful, challenging work to unpack how white supremacy shows up in my own life. One of the hardest parts for me to let go of is the myth of a meritocracy. We all work hard. Being poor and navigating our capitalist society seems like incredibly hard work to me. As a white entrepreneur, I have been granted privileges that people of color would not be afforded. It’s humbling in the best possible ways to realize this. I’m sorry for not seeing it sooner and I’m going to do better to become aware and share what I am learning and unlearning. If you need support in this, and I think most white people do, I highly suggest taking one of @desireeadaway’s trainings. It’s helped me so continue growing as a woman, business owner and human being. Also, please attend a counter protest this weekend to mark the one year anniversary of Charlottesville. Especially if you are a white person, taking a stand against racism is so vitally important. Finally, I’m so excited about the podcast I recorded with Benjamin Spall of @morningroutines about morning routines. Wanna disrupt the system? Focus on your authentic, evolving self-care first thing in the morning and discover how to be an influencer. (Link in my bio!) Last weekend, I went with my two guys to see the lotuses in full bloom and together, we soaked in the beauty. Despite us still having no idea what’s happening with our car (it’s been at the dealership for a week because they can’t get it to turn on), I’ve been feeling really content and able to adapt to life’s ups and downs. That is, until last night, when I lost all sense of calm. What happened was that Micah went out with a friend and I used a free evening to catch up on my to do list, which amped me up. Then, as imbalance craves imbalance, I decided to watch a really exciting TV show before bed. Then, when Micah got home, he took a long time winding down before bed and I tossed in turned in frustration because although I was tired, I wanted to wait for him to join me so he wouldn’t wake me up again. By the time he got in bed, I was pissed at him and we got in a fairly playful fight which was fine but amped me up more. Then, we both turned over to fall asleep and just as I was dozing off, Dinah, our cat pounced on me. Micah slept through it and I woke up, exhausted and started to seethe. To make it worse, our young neighbors got a new motorbike which they were driving up and down our back ally after midnight. Suddenly, I was so angry at the world. My mind filled with hateful thoughts and despite doing breathing exercises and trying to meditate, it only got worse. I finally had to say a prayer of surrender that whatever momentum that was happening was stronger than me and I needed help. I dozed off not long after that and woke up this morning feeling hungover and humbled. Yes, I’ve been able to pretty calmly navigate a couple months of mishaps using self-care. And yes, a bad night can still bring me to a very dark place. It helps me remember that we don’t use self-care to fix ourselves (that’s self-improvement and it doesn’t work), rather we use self-care to do the best we can. It’s a form of self-care to realize I’m always going to fall apart and that it’s ok when I do. I’m human and learning and sometimes in the falling apart I can learn my lessons more deeply.