When we consider our own self care, it can often feel indulgent, but the truth is care is a protective act—protecting you from pain, protecting you from burnout, protecting your peace. Feeling protected creates strength within ourselves to stand sturdier every day as our resiliency grows, and when we feel more grounded, safer, our cortisol lowers and our dopamine and serotonin increases. We’re more emotionally regulated. We’re able to handle stress and unexpected chaos more easily, without it feeling like the end of the world.
In other areas of our life, it’s easier to accept that change takes time and commitment. We show up to our jobs and do great work for the hopes of professional growth or practice our scales until we can play an instrument with ease. Creating a sense of protection for ourselves is the same: it takes consistency, takes showing up. It might look different for everyone, but fostering that feeling within ourselves takes deliberate action. It, sometimes, takes prioritizing ourselves in a way that can feel uncomfortable or foreign.
But everyone, everyone, deserves that sense of stability. They deserve to feel protected in their own skin, capable of handling adversity within themselves physically and emotionally. That care can look a number of different ways—breathwork, stretching, soaking in the sun on a walk, hydrating, massage… the list goes on. The acts that help protect you can be small, that doesn’t make them less worthy. Vincent Van Gogh once said in a letter to his brother, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
So, what small choices can you make to start toward something great? To start choosing you, choosing your peace, choosing your protection? It doesn’t have to be big. You just have to decide it’s worth doing and that you’re worth doing it for (hint: you are worth doing it for).
Written by: Annie Lindenberg, MFA Creative Writing, Menari Blogger