Caring for Myself

Image credit: Photo by hyperbolic pants explosion on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

There's a picture of me somewhere, when my son was a few months old, sitting at the computer and uploading pictures of him to share. I got lots of advice to sleep when the baby slept. I was told by plenty of people that those early sleepless days of parenthood are temporary, that things settle down eventually and I would sleep again. When that shift happened, I would have time for those things I ought to put off in favor of sleep now. That all made sense to me, yet I look at that picture and think about how isolated I felt and how desperately I wanted to do something that wasn't caring for an infant or sleeping, in spite of my utter, mind-numbing exhaustion. I was shocked at how completely my life, and even my body, was not my own anymore and I was determined to wrench some part of my time back to me, even at the cost of much needed rest.

I can't always see what self-care looks like. Was it good self care to push through sleep deprivation to do something that was fun for me and helped me reach out of my isolation to connect with loved ones? Or was it bad self care to add to the exhaustion that exacerbated my postpartum depression and contributed to near daily migraines?

It's something I struggle with to this day. I've had a tough week, full of difficult situations and painful emotions. And I've had to ask myself: is it good self care to skip exercise and meditation in favor of sleep or to skip sleep in favor of exercise and meditation? It's certainly not good self care to down several sugary, caffeinated Cokes and handfuls of cookies in order to stay awake. But it's also not good self care to snap at my kids and my husband because I haven't been able to carve out a quiet moment to myself to connect with my higher power and unwind.

The best I can do is feel my way through, because while I don't always know what self care looks like, I do know what it feels like, and I know, based on how I feel now, that whatever I have been doing, hasn't been quite the kind of self care I need right now.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.