Self-care is a popular topic these days. Self-care this. Self-care that. Extravagant vacations are self-care. Luxurious baths are self-care. Buying moderately expensive gourmet ice cream to eat in a blanket cocoon on your couch is self-care.

I am only ankle deep in the water, but I close my eyes all the same, breathing in the familiar sensations of the beach, our home. I’m not weightless in the water, but I feel lighter, as if I removed the weight of overwhelm and left it on the shore for someone else to carry for a while.

Maybe part of self-care is recognizing that real life isn’t as simple as a self-care checklist formula for happiness. Trial and error – also known as mistakes – are the tools that give us the experiences to keep going and growing.

Do you know what your time is worth? Even more, do you have a vision for how you TRULY want to spend your time? For many working mothers/women; we work because provision is needed. It can become a rat race, always striving and never winning.

In the same way a gardener tends to their garden is how one must nurture their own heart, spirit, and soul to grow with the ever- changing elements and challenges.

I am not ashamed to take medication to treat an illness that has dragged me through the depths of hell and has held my brain hostage for weeks and months on end. I’m not ashamed to take medication so that I am able to get off this roller coaster and see the world like you do. I want to enjoy life with my family.

I'm tired of my brain feeling sick. I'm tired of feeling like I need to prove that I'm ill even when I look fine on the outside. I'm tired of my anxiety and panic being the most interesting things about me.

I’m sure it’s true – you ARE busy, but so is everyone else! Our society at large has placed ‘busyness’ as a status symbol. What kind of status is yet to be seen?

Today was a bad day. Today I had to count on my fingers the joys, the moments of good. Most days there is no counting because most days we laugh and play and, yes, life is not perfect and we all get angry and have our moments, but the vast majority of the day is good. The vast majority of the day is joy. But that’s most days, and today was not most days.

Many highly successful people have said they don’t believe in the idea of balance. While we can certainly debate that, I believe balance is less about finding a perfect split between your priorities, and more about knowing how to find your personal sense of stillness. Finding calm in the chaos doesn’t have to mean that you meditate for 20 minutes a day. For some, calm might mean singing in the shower, hitting the gym, or movie night. Your calm is what you make it.

Take a moment and consider this: what if exercise had nothing to do with weight loss? What if the pressure to get toned arms and a flat tummy as a result of consistent physical activity was completely taken out of the equation? Would you still bother?

I think my writer’s block is fear. It’s becoming one of those days where thinking about what to write, and rereading things I’ve already written, fills my head with a sort of melancholy that makes me feel so tired of even trying. For some reason my own writing makes me feel like going to bed, hiding my head under the blanket, and turning off my brain. Forcefully numbing myself with social media or Netflix. I don’t know why this is.

Typing “Self-Care for Moms” into the Pinterest search bar will fill your screen with women who are lying in bed, lounging in the bathtub, and staring off aimlessly into space. Typing #selfcare into the search bar on Instagram brings back 14 million posts (literally) and will fill your screen with the same images, plus quite a few of women drinking wine.

There’s been a lot of controversy lately about self-care - what it’s “supposed” to look like or what it means. The truth is - it’s different for everyone. What feels life-giving and refreshing to one person might seem unimportant to someone else, but that’s OK.

The thread that weaves itself throughout my relationship journey is always the relationship I have with myself. In this case, I loved him more than I loved myself. And I knew that. Things ended because I desperately wanted to love myself as deeply as he was loving me. While I was enamored with the way he saw me and treated me, I wanted to feel deserving of those things. So I let him go.

I adore the idea of a hygge house. You know the kind; they’re the ones you can find on social media filed under inspiring, peaceful sounding words like #darlinghome, #myhousebeautiful and #simplehousestyle. Scrolling through the feeds is like entering a world of pristine calm. All is white, organic, natural, and clean. Spotlessly clean. I look through the galleries of domestic perfection, and feel gratitude, joy, and Zen criss-cross my computer screen. I want some of that, I think.

In our culture, women especially tend to apologize for not being perfect and as a result overlook their own amazingness. This has got to stop, ladies! Men, too. Instead of worrying about all the things you did not accomplish today, let’s celebrate the tiny victories you did have.

Riding the high of a marathon, I found myself in the hospital getting a whole bunch of tests and scans. I’d been laughing it off, saying it was nothing to worry about. Apparently it was.

What I'm realizing as the weeks slip by and I step more fully into this new version of me, is that the indulgent bubble bath at the end of the night is only enjoyable if I stop calling myself 'lazy' while I take it. The home cooked meal only counts as self care if I don't stand in the mirror obsessing about my stomach afterwards. Self care for me is looking a lot like the way I give myself permission to do and enjoy the things we want.

I started small. I focused on what I was eating. I’ve never had a problem with adjusting my diet, so I figured the easiest step was to focus there first. I re-downloaded the My Fitness Pal app and started paying attention to my portion sizes. I started watching how many calories were in the foods I had been eating. I didn’t starve myself, I still enjoyed food, I just did it in a healthier way. This was my sole focus for a month. And I began to see very slight changes in my body and how I was feeling.