Self-Care: The Fuck You, We Say To Ourselves.
Why am I fully capable of spoiling everyone around me but when it comes to taking care of me, I feel like the most selfish human on the planet? Let me give you some perspective on this story.
Last Tuesday I woke up at 5 am like I always do. I worked till about 10 am (5 hours of work already) and realized I didn’t feel well. I usually go to the gym at this time so I decided to take the day off. Here come the negatives in my mind….you need to go to the gym, you have a photo shoot coming up, you know you can’t skip a day. By 2 pm (Already 9 hours into my day), I am just feeling like crap. I have been reading about Crystals in baths and the benefits of self-care a lot lately, so I start thinking should I take a bath? Here goes my head… it’s the middle of the day, you don’t have time to stop and take a bath, why should you get time to yourself, there are a million things you could do around the house.
Instead of listening to my head of why I am “unworthy” I changed my patterns and I decided to take a bath. I got my crystals, my Epson salt, my essential oils (peppermint and eucalyptus are my faves!), my book, and I relaxed. I FELT AMAZING AFTER! Why am I not doing this more? Why do I always fell I am unworthy of taking care of myself?
I feel like there are so many women who do this! In this day and age, we are the homemakers, mothers, girlfriends/wives and we are the business women with careers. We need to take care of ourselves more now than ever. We hear this over and over from people but the reality that I didn’t hear for years was I was showing people around me how I thought I should be treated.
For years I broke myself almost to the point of losing myself. I didn’t understand why the people closest to me didn’t help. Didn’t give me a break. I didn’t give myself a break. I would bend over backward to make sure someone else was feeling amazing but I was allowing myself to become depressed, depleted and exhausted to a point that makes me ill when I think about it today. That is a tough reality to swallow. I taught people to treat me that way. I taught them that I didn’t need to be taken care of. Yes, I learned it. As a child, I took care of myself A LOT but it is time to unlearn it.
I will take care of myself. I will focus on being healthy and make sure I take steps of self-care. I will still love everyone around me unconditionally. I will do everything possible to help them when they need it, but I will never again sacrifice myself for someone else.
Baby steps in self-care. We all need to start somewhere and realize self-care is not selfish.
- Amanda (@missdjlux) ❤️
