October is here, and every time I enter this month, I gratefully welcome the declining pace that always seems to accompany it. This season feels like a sort of exhale. A time to truly slow down, find a softer pace, and cultivate a little more space for me. Maybe it’s the greying skies or increasing chill in the air. Maybe it’s the darkness that seeps in so early these nights, making me want nothing more than to curl up on the couch with a good book. After the busy, outward, extraverted energy of Summer, I’m finally ready to tend to my own needs again.
But what does this even mean, to tend to our needs? What does caring for ourselves actually look like, in a world with so much messaging around how to do it?
I remember first learning the term ‘self-care’ many years ago. Up until this point, I never considered the small acts of kindness I offered myself to be self-care, for I simply didn’t know the word existed at all. When I first learned about self-care, I fell in love with the idea. To put a label to the things I was already doing, and proudly add them to the to-do list. But as I started going down the self-care rabbit hole, I quickly realized all the ways I should be caring for myself that I wasn’t currently participating in. I was left with the overwhelming sensation of not enough-ness.
One quick search on social media presents a million different ways to care for ourselves, a million different versions of the “best” form of self-care, and a million different routines that we need to be doing. Many of them feel unattainable. Too perfect, almost? Messages telling us self-care is spending 45-minutes on an expensive skin-care routine, or buying a membership to a trendy pilates studio. We’re bombarded with images and videos of morning routines, workouts, healthy meals, bedtime rituals, and various products to accompany each. All of them beautifully portrayed, like a perfect movie scene. Non of them resembling anything near how our real life looks.
I think this commercialization of self-care makes it feel out of reach for many. As if caring for ourself was not a basic human birthright, but an exclusive way of living attained only by the elite. As if our needs can only be met by beautiful workout clothes, fancy journals, trendy powders, and expensive memberships, instead of an inherent ability we all hold inside.
We do not need any of these things.
We do not need to buy self-care.
Caring for ourself is not a commodity.
In actuality, tending to our needs is a deeply personal matter. And more often than not, the ways in which we require care the most won’t look like what’s portrayed online. There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-care through bubble baths and yoga classes and superfoods and facials. These things have their time and place, offering us healing when utilized from the right space, and with the right intention in mind.
But many times, the most important forms of self-care are messy, hard, and challenging - or simply a little boring and not Instagram worthy at all. Self-care is setting boundaries with people, habits, and ourselves. It’s going to therapy, or saying the hard thing that needs to be said. It’s shutting our phone in a drawer to be fully present with life. It’s going to bed on time so we can feel good the next morning. It’s doing that pile of laundry or responding to the email that’s been taking up unnecessary headspace all week.
Self-care is not universal. It’s unique to us, ever-changing with the ebbs and flows of our life. And it doesn’t have to look any particular way.
Sometimes, self-care might be sitting down to meditate or engaging in a journaling practices. Other times, it might be:
shortening your to-do list to only necessary things
lowering expectations on yourself
calling a loved one and asking for help
cancelling a plan that no longer feels good
sitting down to breathe in the morning, even when it feels hard
taking the afternoon off to lie in the grass and simply do nothing
getting lost in a good fiction book
taking specific self-care activities off your to do-list entirely
I felt called to add, and elaborate on, this last bullet point for those of you who are like me. The humans who have a tendency to pile things onto our plates, feel the need to do it all, and set overly high expectations for ourselves, and for our lives.
For us, self-care can easily cross a line from being something that’s supportive to something we have to do every single day. It can become an obsession, a crutch too cling onto, telling ourselves life won’t feel good unless we’ve done xyz. These practices can be incredibly supportive, but they should never be THE thing. We are resilient beings, and no one activity will ever make us whole.
For much of my life, I’ve grappled with the fear of failure. The root of this worry is:
If I stop putting pressure on myself, and no longer hold myself to the highest expectations, than I will evidentially fail. That nothing will ever get done. That I will cease to function as a normal human being. This fear translates to self-care, too. I believed that if I stopped my rigid self-care practices, then I would be a failure. That nothing would ever get anything done, and I would cease to function as a normal human being.
But more often than not, those of us who think these thoughts are likely the ones already putting way too much pressure on ourselves in the first place. The perfectionists, the overachievers, the ones who are hardest on themselves the most. Caring for ourselves should be simple. It most certainly shouldn’t add more pressure or stress to our plate. Self-care should feel supportive, gentle, nurturing, and nourishing. And what feels supportive, gentle, nurturing, and nourishing will constantly change.
Today, I invite you to sit with yourself and ask the hard question: What is it that I really need? Be honest with whatever comes up, knowing this answer is right for you.
May we look inside to discover our needs.
May we honour these needs without judgement.
May we meet our needs with love and tenderness.
May we never compare these needs to others.
From my heart to yours, thank you for reading Hannah’s Haus. If you feel connected to my work, please let me know by tapping the heart to like the post, commenting with your thoughts below, and sharing this post with someone else who might enjoy it.