Leave Self Care to the Professionals

Facials

Massages

Salt rooms

Saunas

Guided meditation

Forest bathing

Mani-Pedis

Self-care isn’t selfish.  I love that.  We need it daily.  Especially us hard working, care-giving, self-improvement seeking women (and some men). 

I had such an aha moment about this after I kicked a 3-year relationship live-in guy out of my house.  I was so elated to be just by myself again!  I put my favorite things back where his ugly things were, I ate dinners of uber healthy ingredients without a chorus of “why don’t we just order wings” in the background, and gloriously, I could fart without his aghast over reactions. 

I was relishing me being me again (yes, there’s another blog topic in here about not standing up for oneself in a relationship, sigh) and I let myself go places and do things and sleep in and pamper myself just the way I wanted, when I wanted. It was glorious!  Until about 3 weeks into this celebration I heard a little voice say “Ease up now, Polly. You’re going a little overboard with doing for you.”  I froze. I felt guilty. I felt selfish. And then I recognized that inner voice as coming from a lifetime of ingrained expectations – call her my mother, me as the daughter, roommate, girlfriend, wife, mother, older girlfriend, call her Past Polly.

I reckoned with this little voice for about 60 seconds and then shook my head and said out loud, “Hell no!” I have been living and doing for others all of my life and this is a golden moment in time to love on me!  It was an awesome, overdue awakening.

But if I was going to continue with the kind of treatments listed at the beginning of this blog, I was going to try to save a little money and do some of those things myself. A pedicure, for example, I can do that! So I purchased a foot bath. A nice little soaky-soak while I do some work and save about $45...

A little too much soap. A frozen cat. A lot of towels.

I guess we need to leave some self-care to the professionals. And know that there are so many other non-costly ways to be good to you,  but do, always do, find ways to love on yourself every day.  Keep spiraling up, friends!