Be Brave in your Body.
This week’s self-care routine focused on grounding down in the last remnants of winter, trying not to escape it in my hopes for spring. I did plenty of yoga, some strength training, creative work, and I ate some delicious, healthy meals; also, I spent some quality family time. What did you do this week for self care?
One of my groups is doing “self-care bingo” this week and I wanted to select a couple areas to work on. One of the prompts is to write down 5 good things about myself. Here they are:
Most people, I think, require deep rest. If you are part of this capitalist society then you may be aware that rest is not an easily-procured thing. Oftentimes rest is considered weakness. This is true for both men and women but in some different ways.
I, like most moms with a career, have not had opportunities for rest and have had to carve time out for self-care. Once that puzzle was figured out (and it takes some trial and error), a more complicated problem emerges: how to allow that care to emerge, how to accept it.
Found a few minutes in the day to spend on caring for your needs? Figured out what to do to take care of yourself? Now the problem — how do you accept that care?
Seems like a problem fraught in privledge, and it is. It is also one grounded in the internalization of cultural ideals about women and mothers. It is also a problem of capitalism, standardized educational practices, marginalization, and stigmas about mental health, to only name a few that pop off in my mind when I think about why it has been so difficult for me to accept my plan of self-care.
Seems like a problem fraught in privledge, and it is. It is also one grounded in the internalization of cultural ideals about women and mothers. It is also a problem of capitalism, standardized educational practices, marginalization, and stigmas about mental health, to only name a few that pop off in my mind when I think about why it has been so difficult for me to accept my plan of self-care.
Here’s my confession: as soon as I sent out my resignation letters, I began what has turned into a month of frantic searching for another job. My mind cannot stop probing into what I am going to do.
Now, my husband is on board and vowed to support me financially for the next year as I supported him financially during the first two years of our relationship. He wants me to take this time, as he did, to explore and find enjoyment in my career again.
I have many questions: what are my passions now? What brings me a sense of vitality and grounding? Where is my heart? What does self-care look like in my 40s?
Anyone would be lucky to have this opportunity.
I am also taking this year of radical self-care to prepare for adoption from foster care, a process into which we are about one year.
Sounds great, right? How wonderful to have alotted this time and space for such magickal work!
But I am struggling to allow myself this space! I have an interview lined up next week and I only JUST posted grades for my last class three days ago. The panic is REALLY REAL for me, yet I am not completley sure what I am panicked about. It’s a nameless dread…always.
There are so many wonderful aspects of creating in order to please, entertain, or otherwise serve somebody else; however, creating strictly for your own purposes, to serve yourself, is a function with which many people lose touch as they grow. When one no longer creates for herself then a quest for acceptance from others that seemingly can never be filled, is created.
In this video, I talk about a need to come back to creating as a function of serving the self, and the importance of bringing that into focus once more.
Support me on patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/elanavery/
Some people have reflected that they are glad that they are not “high maintenance” during the pandemic. But when I thought about high maintenance during this time, I felt that it was quite desirable and could serve our higher journeys. In this video I encourage high maintenance in the form of having, identifying, and expressing needs, expecting those needs to get met, looking at the ego and her strengths, exploring the “victim” archetype, and challenging authority figures. Perhaps embracing a high maintenance approach to life can save lives.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/elanavery?fan…SHOW LESS
Moon Bodies 