Self-Care & Embracing Cycles
Whenever I work with a client on her self-care, I always need to know which season of life she's in. This means, I want to know which cycle of living she's immersed in as she searches for more self-care. Is she trying to build up her business? Is she hoping to make more time for her family? Does she want to end a long-term relationship or dive more deeply into her creativity?
I need to know this because our best self-care is going to look different in each season of life. Sometimes it's an immense act of self-care to put the majority of our energy into our careers. We can put our inner lives on the back burner for a few weeks or months to focus on our professional worlds. The growth that can happen in these stages is exciting! It can be extremely energizing to discover the extent of our personal power. And there's definitely self-care to support ourselves during this forging ahead. We can make sure we're eating regular meals, grounding ourselves through exercise, and not burning the candle at both ends too often (ahem, go to bed! :).
Other times, our self-care means doing way less on the surface so we have more space to cultivate and process our inner lives. These moments of life are particularly important during big transitions. If we're moving cities, switching jobs or retiring, dealing with or recovering from an illness, grieving the loss of a loved one, adjusting to a change in our family, or just contemplating what we need next, our self-care can look much quieter. The self-care that serves me best during these internal times including practices like writing in my journal, finding time for a personal creative practice (lately I've loved playing with watercolors), going to see my therapist and other support groups, and getting more sleep.
And while I think so much of the quality of lives is in our control (mostly with our self-care choices), often the specific season we're in is not. Sometimes we just have to grieve that loss and feel all those difficult feelings even when we'd rather be sharing our latest, brightest accomplishments on social media. During some life phases, we just have to stay late and push forward even when we'd rather be having a cozy, relaxed time with ourselves.
The key is in recognizing the cycle we're in, honoring the wisdom it's imparting to us, and when it's complete, letting our lives transition to the next season. This process, so inherent to nature around us, can feel quite alien in our "push push push, go go go" culture of productivity. We get praised when we share our achievements and encouraged to climber even higher to the top. However, the reverse usually isn't true. When we fall back from the world to do a little internal excavation, we're often met with the well-meaning, but still diminishing question of "What's wrong?".
Personally, I like to envision a dominant world culture where we see nothing wrong with these quieter moments of life. Instead of trying to cheer someone up, we can simply give them space to feel (and perhaps even courageously feel our own feelings alongside them). In my vision, we would honor the immense connection between grief and joy and loss and gain. As a result, I think we would cling a lot less, be more present to what's happening, and enjoy the process of being alive more throughly.
In my own life, I've noticed these cycles most strongly during childbearing. When I was pregnant with my second child in 2019, I spent my first trimester sitting in front of the TV to numb the mix of physical and emotional discomfort I found in the early stages of pregnancy. As I entered my second trimester and felt better, I slowly began building both my business and my outer presence in the world again. I planned exciting new courses, reopened wonderful communities, and plotted new ways to share revolutionary self-care in our world.
When my daughter was born in early 2020, just two weeks before we went into full lockdown, I switched into a completely different phase of pandemic parenting two young children that lasted a good long while. Writing this, I reflect on how the early pandemic was an unprecedented cycle for us all and what specific self-care these huge changes required of us, whether or not we could practice that self-care in the moment.
The revolutionary body of self-care work I've been studying and sharing over these past years is spreading in such exciting ways. More than just hard work, (which of course, there has been some of that) I know this moment of rich harvest is here because I've honored the cycles as they've happened. By taking care of myself the best I can in each specific moment of life, I've been able to grow and evolve without burning out or sacrificing my integrity. This feels like the victory amongst all victories!
So dear one, I ask you now: Which season of life are you in? Are you in a planting cycle? Harvesting cycle? A time to replenish your ground? What self-care can serve you best in this moment?
Within that, can you trust it all to change, not when you want it to, but when it actually needs to? From there, can you know that you are transforming, along with the beauty and the pain and the wonder of how life actually works?
Finally, here’s a vignette from my book selfcarefully (Thick Press, 2019). In it, I explore how to take care of ourselves during the transitional moments between seasons, which I think helps us transition more gracefully between the many important and varied stages of our lives.
Self-Care and the Change of Seasons
As our earth rotates around the sun, nature shifts through the seasons. Depending on where you live, these seasonal fluctuations may be subtle, or they may be dramatic. Through Ayurveda, I’ve learned the importance of modifying my self-care with the change in seasons. The easiest way to do this is to eat what is most readily available at the moment. Living on the East Coast, this usually means grounding root vegetables in the fall, or cleansing green leaves during the spring. When the days are shorter, I take more baths, light candles, and go to sleep earlier. As the days grow longer, I wander more often in nature, delve into creative projects, and stay out later.
I’ve also learned that the transitions between seasons are important moments for increased self-care. (Aren’t transitions always so vulnerable?) During these times, I like to do a gentle cleanse by eating a simple diet for a little while. Ayurvedic doctors often recommend an exclusive diet of kitchari, a rice and mung dal mixture that has been cooked down to an easily-digestible porridge. During a cleanse, I do more self-massage and give myself extra downtime. (These are the practices I have access to that work well for me. They might look very different for others.)
In our one-size-fits-all culture, it can be hard to shift our daily practices with the seasons. We live during a time when strawberries are available year-round from grocery stores and heating and air-conditioning help us escape the elements. Most of us don’t really have to go through the cycles of the year in the same way as generations past.
This is yet another instance of self-care feeling counter-cultural. Going against the cultural flow and aligning with natural cycles takes energy in the beginning—energy to pay attention to my body; energy to establish a new rhythm; energy to feel my feelings that come with the change. Once I make the transition, I find that shifting my self-care with the seasons always gives back more energy than it takes.