How She Takes Care of Herself, Part 1

Ok moms, you’ve trained for this. You’ve clocked hours and hours washing, feeding, clothing, and comforting a human being. Maybe several human beings. You’ve researched how much sleep they need, analyzed their sleep data, reorganized your life around their sleep, and experimented endlessly to make that sleep happen. You know what makes these human beings happy, and you delight in providing games and treats and outings to make them smile and laugh. You buy them cute outfits.

When they’re upset, you know when to give them space and when to give them a hug. When they cough or sniffle, you let them veg out on the couch and recover. You take them to the doctor when it’s more serious. You spend time thinking about how to develop their brains and comfort their spirits. When they want to spend all day in front of a screen, you make them get outside and get some exercise, darn it! You’ve honed your skills as a holistic caregiver. You’re really good at taking care of humans. 

So why are you staying up until midnight scrolling through Instagram, eating potato chips,  ignoring that weird mole on your leg, and wearing a 15-year-old bra? It’s time to apply these caregiving skills to yourself.

Let’s start by defining self-care. Many of us have been conditioned to think of self-care as extra. Pampering, treat yo’self things like massages, manicures, and beach vacations. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not knocking any of those things. They can certainly be part of your self-care package, and if so, that’s great! But for many moms, especially those on tight budgets, and tight schedules, who can barely find time for a shower, those things feel out of reach. 

The big problem is–if we limit our idea of self-care to those extra perks, we can convince ourselves that self-care is not important or necessary for us. And that is just not true. Self-care includes both our wants and our needs. 

You know what human beings need and how to take care of them. So we can start there. Your body needs nutritious food, water, sleep, and exercise. It needs to be cleaned and clothed. Bonus if those clothes also spark a little joy. Your mind needs to learn and grow and develop. Your mind and body may also need medical care or therapy. Your spirit needs to connect with other people and, if it’s what you believe, with God. You need some quiet time once in a while. And your spirit also craves joy and a little fun once in a while. 

So why are moms so notoriously bad at self care? I posed this question to the How She Moms Facebook Group, which you should join, by the way, and the number one response was guilt. Emma Thompson said:

The modern woman is “defined” by her selflessness …. you are the “best mom if you sacrifice” for your kids and family and job and parents and community and and and. Breaking that definition is a tough one, to enjoy reading time on the couch or the pedicure without the nagging voice saying “you should be doing something productive” or your partner is working so you “should” be too, regardless of the downtime he gets in the evenings and weekends when you are still working away on your “shoulds” and kid care.

I think some of that guilt stems from the idea that self care is selfish. Chantel Allen has a few things to say about that:

It is so important for us to have a consistent practice of self care. For me that is my relationship with myself, figuring out what I need right now. If you can love yourself, your life is so different. Your kids look up to you and you’re not so short tempered. You’re spending more time with your kids because you’re not worried about someone judging how clean your house is. 

Self care is not selfish. It’s the best gift you can give your kids and yourself.

Chantel is a mom of four and a life coach (chantelallencoaching.com). She also hosts a podcast of her own, called Living and Loving your Life. You can listen to a full interview with Chantel by subscribing to the How She Moms Plus podcast on Patreon.

Back to some of the obstacles we discussed on Facebook, my sister, Hayley Kirkland said, “I don’t even think about self-care until I break down from either mental or physical exhaustion. I’m obviously not very in tune with messages my body sends me. That, or maybe I’m just really good at ignoring them.”

Another obstacle to self care is that sometimes we get so consumed by our kids’ needs that we neglect ourselves. A few years ago, Cheryl Cardall’s son was really struggling with mental health.

At one point, due to some of his struggles, it sent me into a spiral to the point that I had a hard time getting out of bed. At that point, I realized I was so intertwined with his challenges and his struggles that I lost who I was, and I had to figure out who I was again. It does no good for him if I’m so enmeshed in his issues that I lose myself. I can’t be that strong mom to fight for him if I don’t know who I am. I don’t have control over his path. I know that.  

Cheryl talks about parenting through mental health challenges on her new podcast Fight Like a Mother. She’s doing such amazing, important work. 

In another Facebook post on the topic, Sarah Parry stopped me in my tracks. She said, “Sometimes I can’t even figure out what my needs are.” When I asked her to elaborate, she said, “I think it can happen when I neglect certain needs so long that it’s hard to figure out what will fill them when I actually stop to think about it. Also, I feel that as I’ve changed (from motherhood as well as just living life) some interests have evolved, but I haven’t taken the time or thought to figure out how to incorporate new things into my life. And what new things do I want to incorporate? What will fill me up? For me, that takes trial and error to figure out. Recently I’ve run into more of the ‘error’ side of things.  Still trying.”

 I love that she’s still trying. When we’re kids and teenagers, we’re expected to be trying new things all the time and getting a feel for what we like to do. But sometimes we forget that this can be a lifelong pursuit. 

I want to help Sarah, and I want to help any of you moms who find it hard to identify what you need. So I initially planned to make a self care worksheet to help you identify ways you could take better care of yourself, but it got really big, really fast, and I realized it wasn’t actually that helpful. There are endless ways to take care of yourself, and seeing a big list might be more overwhelming and helpful. Instead, if this is you, I suggest doing a simple journaling activity. Start with five categories: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Spiritual, and Connection. Brainstorm what you need or want in those areas. You can also identify what you’re already doing to take care of yourself in those categories. Then pick just one thing you can do this week to meet one of those needs. Once you get that one down, you can refer back to this journal entry to continue to build in other self care practices. My goal is that after learning from to the moms in this post, this brainstorming session will be a piece of cake. 

My friend Celeste Davis has a wonderful response to many of the obstacles to self care we’ve talked about– the guilt, the need to prioritize it, and how to figure out what we need. 

I think that unfortunately self care gets a bad rap because people think the big problem with the world is that people are just thinking of themselves…at the cost of everyone else. But I like to think of self care as soul care. And it turns out our souls need a lot of care. If we’re going to be showing up for our loved one as our best selves, we need to be doing that soul care, otherwise we’re going to be inadvertently showing up for our husbands and our kids as our worst selves, because we’re going to be rundown and burnt out. Otherwise, we’re going to be inadvertently showing up as our worst selves because we haven’t taken care of our souls.

She likes to think of self care as a Venn Diagram, with stuff that’s good for our souls in one circle, what we genuinely enjoy doing in another and then the middle, overlapping section with things that fit in both circles. For her, those things are reading, writing, and being in nature.

Celeste is a fabulous writer and marriage researcher. She blogs at marriagelaboratory.com. 

My Venn Diagram happens to look very similar to hers. But those three things might not be anywhere in either circle for you. I feel like I say this every episode, but that’s because it’s true. Our own personalities and life experiences will determine what we want and need, as does our current stage of life.

I already released an episode called How to Find Time Alone—that’s a big need for moms with young kids especially–so I’m not going to dwell on that aspect of self care. 

But I will share a little more from a mom I featured in that episode, Ashley Freehan. She talked about how she sets a firm boundary with her kids, so she can have her mornings to herself until 7:00. 

 Ashley used to sleep as long as she could, until her kids woke her up. Then she heard someone say, “You have to wake up before your kids if you want to have a productive, joy-filled day.” So she decided to try it. It took about six months to actually do it consistently, but now she’s got it down.  

Ashley now wakes up at 5:15 and focuses on her own needs until her kids wake up at 7:00. She gets dressed and ready for the day, does a Bible study, writes in her journal, reads a book, or gives herself a pedicure…whatever she needs. But what she doesn’t do is work. No email, no client needs.

Ashley Freehan is a photographer and the founder of The Purpose Gathering. She also hosts a podcast by that name. 

Brooke Romney is in a stage where she gets plenty of time to herself. As her kids started growing up and going to school, she started putting more and more time into her writing career, and she no longer has a deficit of alone time. So for her, now:  

Self care is definitely spending time building relationships. I spend a lot of time on my own, thinking and writing. So when it comes to more care, I look outward—spending time with my husband on a date night, doing something fun with my kids, usually outside and spontaneous. I love to get out and take a walk with a friend.

 I make sure that I exercise, and when I exercise I do things I love. So exercise is not a punishment, it’s something I look forward to. So I take dance classes and I do yoga and every now and then I throw a run in. 

Definitely getting rest—I used to think you were awesome if you were a person that didn’t need to sleep and could run on fumes. But then I realized that that just made me a really grumpy and irritable person, so I prefer to get a full night of sleep so I can be the kind of person I want to be during the day. 

When I had younger children, self-care looked like long walks with friends with kids in wagons and strollers. It looked like 2-3 hours at the park, not worrying that my house wasn’t getting clean because I was engaging with my kids, engaging with my friends, enjoying nature. 

Brooke is one of my favorite writers, and in fact, her new book, “I Like Me Anyway” just showed up on my doorstep. I’m so excited to dig in. One of my other favorite things she creates is Teen Talk Tuesday—a weekly topic to discuss with your teenagers. She comes up with relevant and usually controversial topics with great questions to guide deep conversations about ideas. You can find it on Instagram @brookeromneywrites.

Delphine Brandt is in a similar stage. Once all her kids were in school, she started working out and volunteering to help the renovation of a local theater. She sometimes even travels nearly two hours from her little town in Arizona to Las Vegas to shop, get her hair done, and take workout classes that aren’t available where she lives. 

For the first time, I’m in the same boat as Brooke and Delphine–all of my kids are in school. And many of my friends are either in the same stage or quickly approaching it. We’re in midlife. And we all know the dirty word that usually follows the word midlife. I suppose you could call How She Moms my self care answer to the midlife crisis. Or more accurately the way I have thus far avoided the crisis part. I had been wanting to get back to writing and I had been nurturing the idea of writing about motherhood for a really long time. When my schedule opened up, this blog and now podcast jumped right in and gave me purpose. With the support of friends and everyone who is listening right now. 

But some of my friends, in the same situation are struggling to find that new purpose to fill the void. I’m working on an episode about how moms find passion and purpose, so if you have any stories to share about your own passions, I’d love to talk to you about it! You can email me at whitney@howshemoms.com.

Jen Brewer found her passion in an unexpected place: 

When I was going through my hard time, I finally came to a moment when I owned my passion, and that my passion did not revolve around being a homemaker. I finally released the guilt from that. My true passion is fighting malnutrition, and I do that by going to Guatemala. Weird and random, I own that. And I will drag my kids to Guatemala. I realize that not everyone can—I’m in a weird circumstance, but I feel the most alive when I’m digging a garden in a completely forgotten, remote area that’s not even a blip on a map, so that some family can have a way to feed themselves. That’s my total zen. 

I feel like this is truly why I was put on the Earth. That doesn’t mean that I don’t focus on my kids, but I definitely carve out time to do it. 

When I’m home, writing is my oxygen. I will let my house go to pot, to be honest, to get some writing time in. And I don’t feel guilty about that. They can all clean. They can either come home to a clean house and a bitter mom, or a dirty house and a mom who welcomes them because I got my writing time in.

Chantel Allen also uses writing as self care, but in a very deliberate way: 

I sit down with a notebook and for about 15 minutes I do a thought download. I get a piece of paper and I just start writing. I’ll put a timer on it for three-to-five minutes, and I don’t lift the pen until it goes off. And this can be hard, because our brain doesn’t want to complain. And we’ve trained ourselves to think in complete sentences. So teaching it to just dump out and vomit fragments and feelings is sometimes hard for our trained brain to do. But doing that helps us see the nooks and crannies in our brain—like cleaning out the closet. 

I do it at least three times a week, because I notice that if I’m struggling or short tempered, I need to see what’s going on in my brain and decide what to do about it.

This thought download helps her manage her anxiety and take better care of herself. 

One of my favorite things about researching for this episode is just how different self-care looks for everyone. For some moms, taking care of their physical appearance is just the pick-me-up they need to feel more like themselves. They’re not just vain and indulgent. I certainly feel much better and more cared for on the days that I take the time to take a shower, put some makeup on and otherwise make myself look presentable. Getting a haircut feels amazing. Getting a mani-pedi with some friends can be life-giving, especially to a new mom who is tired of wearing clothes that don’t fit and smell like sour milk. Don’t dismiss these things as frivolous. 

My neighbor, Valeria Miller, schedules a facial for herself every month. It automatically deducts from her checking account, so she already has it worked into her budget, and therefore is motivated to reschedule each month. She does the same thing with her monthly therapy appointments.

She also started buying flowers when she goes grocery shopping. She realized she never hesitated to buy little things to brighten her kids’ day—why not forgo a bag of chips and buy flowers instead. 

I love Val’s emphasis on scheduling in her self care. Sometime just getting self-care on your schedule is the best way to actually make it happen. Celeste does the same thing. She sets an appointment for herself from 2:00 to 3:00 every afternoon to recharge and rest or relax. I realized, “I deserve to have fun, dang it! I don’t have to earn my fun through productivity!”

My sister-in-law, Angelynn Singley told me that self care for her is basically boring adult stuff like going to bed on time, drinking water, budgeting, and choosing to stay away from social media. 

For me, cleaning my own room and bathroom and doing my own laundry counts as self care, because I so often make those things a last priority after cleaning the shared spaces or helping my kids clean their rooms.

Sometimes the best self-care is being productive. But sometimes as a moms and home managers, we have no evidence of our productivity because of the cyclical nature of so many tasks we do like cooking, laundry. And then there are the immeasurable things like comforting kids, helping them with homework, or playing with them. Brittney Smart lived up to her last name and then some with her solution to this problem—creating a more accurate record of her productivity.

Brittney realized that she was barely making a dent in her to-do list each day, because she was making the tasks too big. So she decided to break things down into smaller tasks. For example, making dinner involves deciding what to make, going shopping, browning the meat, etc. 

This helps her realize how she actually spends her time, and how much more she actually accomplishes than she thought. 

In the end, self-care is whatever meets your needs, fills you up, and makes you feel most like you. I hope this episode sparked some of your own ideas about how you can care for yourself as well as you care for all those other people in your life. In the next episode I’ll focus on three moms with different approaches to self care. I can’t wait for you to meet them.