Changing the conversation on 'self-care'

There has been oodles and oodles of time spent navel-gazing writing and thinking about 'self-care' in the mommy blogosphere.

When I click the latest link, I expect to discover a new and crucial revelation about the need to attend to one's own needs, but I find myself usually left wanting.

"Self-care isn't selfish!" we are reminded endlessly. "Put on your own oxygen mask first!"

To all of this I nod appreciatively, only to read on for a few sentences to uncover the benefits of getting a pedicure. Almost without fail, pedicures, beauty regimes and hot coffee drank in silence are given as examples of good self-care.

I am here to say, enough already. It's time to change the conversation on "self-care."

We live in a culture that celebrates the need to "treat yo'self." Writers online can't help but preface a silly statement with "this may seem like a first-world problem but" and then proceed to show how self-reflectingly entitled they are ("this may seem like a first-world problem but I am sometimes disappointed by the meal I get when I order in a restaurant!" -- an actual statement I heard on a podcast recently).

So when the subject of "self-care" comes up, it almost always seems to boil down to self-indulgence. Doing things that feel good, because by golly, we moms are endlessly looking after other people's needs.

I don't question whether moms' time is often absorbed in other people's needs, I have four children. I get that. I live that.

Nor do I question the need for women to look after themselves well, to find refreshment, to take preventative steps from burning out and being useless to their families and themselves.

However.

Self-care should look more like care than treats. In fact, what amounts to actual self-care actually mightn't feel particularly pleasant at all. Perhaps swallowing one's pride booking a therapy appointment, or accepting that snacking mindlessly isn't the same thing as eating lunch and changing accordingly. Praying the Rosary, or a decade of the Rosary, may better fill our fleeting moments of silence than scrolling through pick-your-poison social media.

I myself detest doing my Diastasis Recti exercises -- they seem boring and beneath me, and I'm a couch-potato-with-book-in-hand kind of person. Yet the fact that my weakened core makes just standing long enough to wash the dishes painful means I need to 'man' up, if you will, and do it.

There is certainly a place for luxuriating, for pampering oneself. Many moms don't get enough of those things. But I believe that actual self-care, the kind that fits most closely within the oxygen mask metaphor, is not made up of treats and indulgences, but in daily habits that might actually entail further self-denial for the overall goal of our mental and physical health.

This is part of adulthood, this is part of the road to wholeness, and holiness -- to exercise the wisdom to do what is actually best for ourselves. The truest form of care given to any person, be it to ourselves, or another person, is to grow deeper in our relationship with Christ. That is not earned by escapist indulgences but by seeking the true and occasionally inconvenient good.

"Don't be 'namby pamby'! That's not the way I want you. 

It's time you get rid of that peculiar pity you feel for yourself." 

St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

N.B. This post was brought to you by an insomniac blogger at 2:30 in the morning. Apparently I need to take the log out of my own eye and go back to bed?