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:

Yesterday, I was part of creating this wild collaborative painting with a group of DC women (thanks for inviting me @manishatare !). For an hour, we painted over each other’s work and ended in a place more awesome than any of us could have gone alone. In my own life, I’ve decided to take a step back from a lot of things. I’ve paused my Wednesday newsletter, stopped recording new podcasts and I’m even letting go of visioning ahead. I’m doing this because I’m finally respecting that I’m just not in the workhorse mode right now. Truly, I haven’t been since the late stages of my pregnancy last year, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to force myself back into high productivity. I’ve loved becoming a mother, but I’ve also felt so guilty and inadequate when it’s come to running my business. After a few years of surprising success, my ego was determined to evade failure. Well, guess what - I’ve failed! I know I can’t go back to how things were and I can’t quite see the way ahead. Wisdom tells me to willingly let my fields lie fallow for a while. I’m experiencing a real ego death as I do this, but I’m also being liberated from the constant pressure to do more, be more, have more. As Micah says, the only thing in nature that grows unchecked is cancer. For everything else, there are seasons and cycles, endings and rebirths. Finally, I’m starting to realize that I’m part of the everything else and that feels like the sweetest exhalation ever.💜 Look at this guy! He’s almost nine months and rearing to go, having decided to skip crawling and go straight to walking (still with our guidance, for now). He’s also been so fussy this past week. He’s cutting his top two teeth and has some upper respiratory sickness and we took him away on retreat with us this weekend. Seeing life through his vulnerable perspective reminds me how difficult transitions are for us all. It brings up many messy emotions and often, literal pain. In our culture, we are so adverse to vulnerability. I cry listening to the news that our government is taking children away from their parents because...we need to teach them a lesson? The people who are making decisions have built a wall between themselves and their own tenderness. The result is that they can’t grow internally and instead, feel compelled to dominate externally, particularly abusing those who are more vulnerable than them. It’s sickening to me, and then, so hard to see how I do it too in subtle ways. This is where this self-care work comes into the bigger picture. If we can’t honor the tender, messy parts of ourselves as necessary and valuable, then there is no way we can treat the vulnerability outside of us with anything but contempt. When we watch the news and feel powerless to make a change in the world, let’s try looking inside. Care for the broken, messy parts of yourself. See what it opens up. See how much more compassion and capacity you have to help others from this place. It’s not self-indulgent. It’s not naval-gazing. It’s necessary and it’s hard work. Let’s do it together. Let’s start today. This! My bullet points don’t seem to mean much these days and that seems to be making all the meaning. Thanks to @wellinthewest for passing on this bit of brilliance! Here's another great shot from @annmarieloveslove 😍 I think this one gets the spirit of our family. It's so sweet and it's also so consuming. Jonah is sick again today and I'm home with him on a daycare day. It's hard to think I have a day for myself and then shift that expectation so quickly. Yet Micah has a big briefing tomorrow and it's much easier for me to change my schedule. I'm ok with this but it's still hard. Being almost nine months into motherhood, I'm struck by how much easier it's getting and how much more challenging it seems at the same time. I am sleeping more and Jonah can play by himself for longer. We've figured out the right balance for us between disposable and cloth diapers, and learned how to make our own baby food (so fun!). The harder part is that in reaching this milestone of time, I'm realizing that there truly is no going back. I'm not going to pick back up on my work in the same way. I won't be able to be in relationship like I was before. I'm having to reform who I am and what I want from the ground up. This restructuring of identity is deep work. This is where I guide my clients. Our fear of change is pretty much always what blocks our self-care. Something in us-usually not a very conscious part of us-is super afraid of who we will be on the other side of all that empowering change and who we will disappoint in the process. But, we're never going to be content until we allow ourselves to evolve. It's scary, it's hard and it makes us do things we don't want to do. And we will never feel satisfied until we figure out a way to courageously work through the hardness of personal growth. We emerge on the other side, muscles aching and so proud of ourselves. In that way, motherhood is a gift. Before meeting Micah Haskell-Hoehl, I had gotten pretty comfortable in my ruts of life. I was good at who I was. Now, I'm pretty uncomfortable a lot of the time, but I am growing in such deeply important ways. I think this is the stuff we talk about when we talk about "adulting." It's not about having kids, getting married or buying a house. (Continued in the comments...) Since celebration is a huge part of self-care (one that we often deny ourselves in the pursuit of being “good”), I want to do one more post about the spectacular wedding of @brobuchowicz (my brother) and his now lovely wife @sarahtoday. Aren’t they stunning? What follows is a mishmash of the day: my dresses from RTR (the top for the rehearsal dinner and the bottom for the ceremony - wish I could have kept that one!), Jonah refusing our attempts to block the ceremony sun, the scrabble cake toppers for the most delicious cakes, and my post-wedding breakfast to reset my system after a weekend of indulging (scrambled eggs with sautéed carrot greens + butternut squash oven home fries). Also, see the comments for my reading from the wedding, one of the best passages of love I’ve found from Rainer Maria Rilke. Wishing you celebration, today and always! This has been one of the biggest weeks for my family. We found our home on Monday and my brother got married on Sunday (congratulations @brobuchowicz and @sarahtoday - it was perfect). Within all these rites of passage, I kept thinking about my dad, who passed away over three years ago now. I think he would have been so proud of where we’ve landed, and the way my brother and I ended up here (not out of conventional or convenience, but fueled by desire and commitment). And it’s sad that he hasn’t been here to see the fruition of the arduous work of parenting. It’s one the hard parts of this wild nature we spring from: it ends, sometimes quite suddenly, and for this the living is that much sweeter. There’s a fierce compassion to it all which holds me and all the feelings that come up during these passages. The joy and the grief will eternally live together. I can whisper into unknown to him that we’ve made it, not totally, but at least to the place where our roots can hopefully grow deep. Sometimes there are answers. Since his passing, I’ve associated those floating, ethereal seed pods with his presence. Yesterday the GPS routed me strangely leaving the city, and I went with it. While stopped in traffic, I looked up and there were hundreds of those fluffy pods floating above us. It felt profound and silly all at once - kind of like this life we are living. A question for today: what if I am already doing everything exactly the way it needs to be done? We put in a contract on a beautiful house in our neighborhood and it was accepted two hours later (at-price no less!). At first, I felt numb and confused. Wasn’t I supposed to be elated? The next day I spent a lot of time feeling super anxious and sad. When I checked in, I realized two things: 1) I’m not ready to move again and leave our current home (but alas, we’re getting the boot), and 2) all the money (the DC housing market is insane) brings up so much scarcity. My brain tried to figure out all the ways I could earn more money. Instead of being fun, this just felt like more pressure. By the end of the day, I felt like I made a mistake years ago but not sticking with a steady 9-5. If screwed it all up. After a few days, I’m starting to relax and get more excited about this new opportunity. I’m also trusting that we’ve taken care of business (and will continue to) exactly the way it needs to be taken care of. I mean, it couldn’t have been any different, right? All of this highlights that subtle but essential difference between self-care and self-improvement. Self-improvement reinforces that I’m never enough, while self-care affirms my worth and helps me use this abundance to help others. (With that, please donate to @thrive_dc today - such a wonderful, caring organization, link in my bio) PS - thank you to @ammers for my fabulous new headshots! Hello all! Did you know today is Do More 24? It's a full day of philanthropic goodness. It's a chance of us to recognize our abundance by sharing with others who need to be supported. In our culture, we are terrified of vulnerability. We try to act strong, pretend we can do it alone, and look down on others who can't cut it on their own. As a result, we all feel lonely, depress and anxious. We have forgotten the basic truth that we are stronger together and that my salvation is wrapped up in yours (and vice versa). It can be scary to let go of what is "ours," especially when we feel afraid that our good luck and fortunes will run out. I believe we can create a true feeling of abundance by giving as much as we get. Please consider donating just $26 to Thrive DC. This small amount gives 30 days of hot showers to Thrive's clients. Imagine getting a hot shower after a night of sleeping at a shelter? Pretty revolutionary, right? (Link to donate in my bio) I volunteer and serve on the board of Thrive because they are an organization dedicating to caring for DC's growing homeless population. In this quickly gentrifying city - which I contribute to - where housing prices are astronomical, it's important to me to support organizations that care for those who are getting pushed out and struggling to merely exist. Supporting Thrive DC isn't everything, but for me, it's an important start. I hope you can contribute a little or lot, depending on your capability. Please share with friends/family. Thank you so much! I had my first Mother’s Day with this guy (at least with him outside of the womb)! We spent it beside dolphin-filled waters in South Carolina. Yes, these holidays are created by card companies. But, I think we need these designated moments to pause, reflect, and appreciate our life milestones. Having Jonah has been a trip beyond all trips. On the surface, I haven’t slept through the night in more than nine months and have bodily fluids on my clothing most of the time. Inside, I feel the rightness of him being in my life and of everything organized around this squealing, wriggling, quickly-growing babe. Mothering him is a very profound joy, one that is matched with deep grief for all I’ve given up to be here. I have such a respect for the mothering that we ALL do for each other. It’s so powerful and so often undervalued. I have such big dreams for how we can cultivate this superpower more and more. It’s what our world needs to heal and it’s already within each of us. Self-care unlocks it and shows us how to use it to change the world. It’s time harness it. We need it for Jonah, for me, and for you and yours. Micah and I are in full-fledged house-buying mode. Wow, what a crazy process! Especially because we didn’t chose this (our owners want to sell our rental, which is a lovely house but needs SO much work), but again, it seems like our relationship is less about making choices and more about going with the flow. We spent all morning on Sunday with our realtor looking at homes, toting Jonah around to each one. Micah had been sick all weekend (again!), but he was a trooper. We saw one house that we really liked, and when we got home, I was so anxious to discuss it with him. However, he told me he needed to rest for a while first. Jonah was down for his nap, so what was I supposed to do with my anxiety? Eat half a bag of Cheetos and numb out on social media? I wanted to. Luckily, my new watercolor set had just arrived. I spent the next half hour playing with the colors, drinking tea, and listening to music. Rather than depending on Micah to calm me down, I used this downtime to calm myself down and take a bit of space around this big decision. A little later, when Micah was ready to talk, I could approach our conversation in a more grounded way. Once again, a little focused self-care saved me! I know so many of us are dealing with decisions that feel too big to ignore. In these moments, taking a little time for self-care can feel totally illogical. It feels like giving up. However, in my experience, making decisions from a place of anxiety NEVER turns out well, while letting things work themselves out usually leads to pretty awesome results. Our work is to be disciplined enough to take time out until we feel calm enough to move forward. I think that’s a pretty great recipe for creating a beautiful life.