Self Care hard ™️

We’ve been told “Work Hard…Play Hard” . but we have never been told to tend & take care of ourselves HARD.

Or maybe we did but I was too busy working & playing hard that I didn’t get the memo ↓

That seems to be a running theme for me sometimes “not getting the memo” whether it’s at work cause I got too overwhelmed by the amount of emails in my inbox and flipped to social media instead. Or me not realizing for close to 2 years when I was in grade school that I was the butt of the inside joke and I was not laughing with people but they were instead laughing at me. OOhhf. Or continue to keep relationships, connections, projects, or even wild nights on life support when they are long overdue on their expiration because I have this thing with nostalgia. Nostalgia and I go way back…like old lovers. So maybe I’m just late to this or exactly on time…who knows? But here we are.

I think sometimes the hardest part is knowing how & where to start.

Here we all are after two years of being in a Global Pandemic and all things it brought, ended, or finally made us aware of. Two years of being in The Dumpster Fire, turning Forty Years Old on a Zoom birthday, Times Square looking like that scene from “Eyes Wide Shut”, people running out of the city and me being given an “official letter” by the Governor that I can stay out past “curfew”. All while having my “ lil project” mirror “lil donna” and just do what it wanted to do regardless of my plans for it.

Two years of starting a podcast, hosting moon circles, running on fumes, starting a small business, feeling good & feeling like I failed all at the same time. Two years of actual “Survival Mode”.

I had a lot of ups and downs and also had very few reserves left. I was leaning into unhealthy habits again, old “stuff” was coming up, and I felt isolated and disconnected from friends, family, and myself. But also none of the “things” that used to bring me joy…were. So I couldn’t “fix” it….even temporarily.

The things that I used to like or look forward to didn’t hit for me anymore. I felt like I fell off. & I was pissed at myself for letting this happen…AGAIN.

And this pissed me off - I had spent the previous few years really working on my mental health, “unpacking”, pushing myself out of my comfort zones, paying down my debt, finding a community, creating community, and this project on the internet. On paper, I should be thriving. But in reality, I wasn’t. How the hell did I find myself back at square one and slipping again?

This time I surrendered.

Mostly because…I was too tired to resist. I couldn’t go another round. So I called myself out on my shit…AGAIN but this time made podcast episodes about it. I did things like Hygge, addressed my social media addiction, practiced staying present, dealt with my shadow resentment, and saved a dude’s life on a plane. I evaluated and reestablished my relationship with booze, myself, “fixing” and codependency.

After almost a year of being in my feelings, eating whatever I wanted (I gained almost 20 pounds), and holding space for myself, ya girl was ready. I decided the first step was to finally clean out the basement and attic of my mental and emotional health and dust the cobwebs of the things that crept back. From there, my physical health would follow. Oh yeah and this time would give me some grace and consideration for all the stress we had been under the last 2 years, I accepted that my nervous system was wildly overwhelmed and needed to recoup.

I accepted that this didn’t happen overnight & I probably wasn’t going to “bounceback” like I used to.

For one Im not 22 anymore. But also we have really been through it. So… I have spent over a year working on this in therapy and workshops and reading science articles and studies. also Reddit boards and memes.

I tried to figure out the best balance for my dopamine-loving, checking-off, and list-making self, and I came up with Self Care Hard.

During the time I was figuring out how to get my shit together again, I sat next to my co-worker and said I out loud “I just wish I had a mom who would like tell me what to do and plan it all out” and she said, “I just wish there was this guide on how to do it..”

How could two nurses be sitting there wanting someone to guide them and hold their hands in taking care of themselves?

How could we not know how?? We ARE NURSES, it is in fact what we do. But hey..I wasn’t alone.

So I got to work and created this plan I could follow that would set the foundation for “the next chapter of Me” - I laid it all out on post-its and notebook pages on my walls and living room floor. It was a real scene lol. But I thought you know what? this might be worth sharing.