Self-Care Wears Many Disguises

 I had the opportunity to join in a beautiful community gathering this past week to celebrate the arrival of the Fall Equinox. We gathered around a crackling fire, sipping tea, grounding ourselves in the change of the seasons, reflecting on what the summer had been like, and our hopes for the incoming autumn.  

Journaling has been an instrumental tool in my journey of self-awareness and growth, and is one I find myself returning to when I need clarification or a space to dump the thoughts and feelings I am carrying around with me. When I first started to journal, I felt unsure of what exactly to do and sat facing the blank page, filled with expectations of sudden enlightenment.  Although the enlightenment I was seeking didn't come (right away), the words did start to flow.  Slowly at first, haltingly as if they were shy to leave the safety of my mind, appearing on the bright white pages for the world to see, then much more easily and in vast quantities.  At one point, I had three journals I wrote in: one to hold the thoughts I wanted to share with my therapist, another for my daily morning practice of free-writing, and a third, which I named my "ugly journal," where I wrote down anything and everything that came to mind, no matter how harsh or unapologetic it sounded. 

Considering the amount of experience I have had with journaling, it felt surprising not to have anything come to mind when prompted at the fire to write. Everyone else seemed to easily slip into the act of documenting their thoughts, emotions, and experiences, and there I was once again facing a blank page. I willed myself to come up with something, and eventually, some words did grace my page.  But it didn't feel fulfilling. There seemed to be a disconnect between what I was writing and how I was feeling.  I finished the thoughts I had started and turned the page.  Suddenly, I was gripped by a need to write down a hurtful phrase I had been told in my past, about myself.  Without thinking, I followed this urge, and before I knew it, my page filled with other equally unflattering and negative phrases, thoughts, and narratives that had been shared with me by others, or that I had invented in my own inner storytelling.  I hate to admit how quickly my page filled as more venom dripped from my pen. The only redeeming quality of this exercise was that with each line I completed, I felt a bit of lightness enter my body.  It was as if committing these things to the page was helping me to sweep them from the corners of my mind and heart where they had been taking up space for much too long. 

We had an opportunity to share what we had been reflecting on, and as I briefly described what I had written, I took that hurtful, hate-filled page from my journal and added it to the fire, feeling a sense of freedom as it quickly ignited and turned to ash. This exercise may not look like the more traditional version of self-care that appears gentle, soft, and soothing. It may instead look extreme and even punitive in nature. I assure you, it was not. In fact, it was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. It was intuitive and powerful, and a necessary step in shedding the old and making space for the new.  It was also an exercise that I am sure I will need to repeat a few more times, at a few more fires, before I begin to really feel the depth of its impact. 

I share this to bring forward the idea that self-care can take many different forms, and does not need to be what you might hear or see others partaking in.  Self-care needs to be self-directed, and ultimately needs to be what you need, in the moment when you need it. Don't be afraid to listen to your inner voice and allow it to guide you toward the practice or activity that speaks the loudest, as that is most likely the one thing that you need the most.