There Is No Wrong Way To Take Care of Yourself
Hi, I’m Sam. Welcome! Healing Field Notes Is a Free Newsletter I Send Out Twice a Month. Thank You for Reading.
Happy Valentine’s Day, sweet grean beans!
I read a quote recently about how you can’t think your way into living differently, you have to live your way into thinking differently.
For so long, I’ve been really focused on changing the way I think, what my inner dialogue sounds like, and while those things are important, there are also things I do in my day-to-day that aren’t the softest or compassionate towards myself.
After a hard day, I sat frozen on my bed scrolling TikTok. When I’m in this frozen state, I usually can only get out of it when I feel safe. But at night is when I feel the least safe, but warm water always helps. So does the company. So I ask DJ to take a shower with me. I’m always done before him and as he finishes, I do my skincare routine — oil, moisturizer, eye cream, maybe exfoliate depending on the night.
I notice that I am rubbing my face really hard when I put my oil in– as if rubbing it in harder will do its job better. Really, this act just makes my skin more irritated and forces my upper body to tense up. For a moment, for the first time maybe all week, I notice my body. I notice how tense I am and decide that for my next step to slowly and gently rub my moisturizer in. I sweep my fingertips across my face, a gentle ballet just for me. I notice my jaw muscle relax. I continue onto the eye cream. A rhumba along my under the eye.
I am meanest towards myself when I am not taking care of myself the ways I feel like I am “supposed” to be. One of the hardest things for me about keeping a routine is, when I do not stick to it, I convince myself I am vile. I tell myself that I am worthless.
My skincare routine and my morning cup of coffee are just about as consistent as I get. I am also consistent in getting frozen thinking about how I didn’t stick to the routine I set for myself, how I didn’t meditate, dance, or go on a walk every day as I told myself I would.
We live in a world that really values routine. And it’s true, there are things I just have to routinely do. I have to take my medication every day so that I am less of, what Cody would call, a tornado person. I routinely get hungry which means I routinely have to listen to my body when it’s telling me it needs nourishment.
But I am not a bad person if I don’t meditate every day. I’m not a bad person if I chose to take care of my body in mind in different ways.
With the ongoing destigmatization of mental health has come the mainstream self-care movement. There is nothing wrong with self-care. There is nothing wrong with all the ways we are told that we can carve out a moment to be with ourselves. But I can become overwhelmed when I think about all the ways there are to take care of myself. I am trying to turn this overwhelm into curiosity, into leaning into the mystery, but we’re in baby steps mode.
There is no wrong way to take care of yourself. It’s okay if taking care of yourself looks different every day. You do not have to be consistent or do the same thing every day in order to be taking care of yourself.
I keep thinking I can think myself into being nicer to myself. But it’s so much more than that. It’s internally releasing myself from this expectation to show up to the same thing every day and letting the way I live that into action look different.
Some days, taking care of myself does look like meditating. Sometimes it looks like laying in bed 10 minutes longer than I had originally planned. The self-care I am interested in is the self-care that is intuitive, the self-care that is committed to listening to my body closely.
I said in my last newsletter that I was going to dance every day this month. I danced on February 1st and not a day since. At first, I shamed myself, told myself that I am a failure because I can’t even show up to embodiment on a consistent basis (which by the way is really fucking hard if you’ve spent your whole life feeling terrified of your body).
Then on the night that I realized I was rubbing my face softer, showing up to my body with more gentleness than I had before, I realized this is embodiment. This is taking care of myself. This is living my way into thinking differently. This is love.
The other side of learning to be okay with showing up to myself differently each day based on what my body tells me it needs is that sometimes I need a little help deciding what I need. I first heard the idea of a self-care menu from @general.caronobi on TikTok. I went back to therapy last week and since we are doing really hard work, I absolutely have to have a solid plan to show up to myself both before and after my sessions. But again, some days I just don’t know what that looks like.
So I made my own Take Care Menu. On the days where you need a little extra love but aren’t able to listen to that inner voice (because trust me, I know that voice can be nothing but static some days), I made you a template.
You can print it out or save it on your computer and edit it in Adobe Acrobat or just make one of your own. Just know– there is no wrong way to take care of yourself and each day can be different. If you need some inspiration, I’ve shared my Take Care Menu below.
Find the blank templates here.
Or, if you prefer, here is a Notion template.
✨joy corner✨
just some things that brought me joy this week or made me giggle
DANCING TO EVERYTIME WE TOUCH BY CASCADA
this funny text from my partner 👇🏻
📝intentionality portal📝
taking it slow & paying attention to the things that nourish me & my communities
This TikTok and this TikTok.
Listening to this episode of Living in this Queer Body.
Reading this article about not knowing how to be a casual friend.
I’m fully obsessed with Annika’s newsletter.
💭 Q&A💭
I answer questions once a month here in this little section. Want to submit a question for me to answer at the end of the month? Submit here.
🌞support me🌞
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Thanks for sticking around.
Love,
Sam