Truth: I’m Kinda Sick of Hearing About Self Care

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The words “self care” are becoming way overused and are causing more pressure than anything.

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Yikes. I know. Is this awful of me to say out loud? Just hear me out though.

I know that I have jumped on the self care bandwagon pretty much right from the beginning. I’ve even talked about how the sentiment of self care has changed my life. And it has to an extent. However, as time passes, I see more and more women stressing about self care when there should be zero stress surrounding these two words.

Truth: I’m Kinda Sick of Hearing About Self Care

Believe me, the irony is not lost on me here.

As soon as I wrote about how self care changed my life, I noticed something: self care is so much more than manicures and a proper beauty regimen. So I started to change the way that I thought about self care and wrote about it. I started by listing out 17 different activities that cost nothing, but totally help you take care of yourself. I’ve opened up about my mental health. I’ve suggested different self care strategies that help you make some time for the things that help you feel your best.

The list could go on and on and I tried, I really, really tried to be part of this shift that put things into perspective for busy moms: we just need to do things to take care of ourselves and stop putting ourselves at the end of the line.

But here we are in 2020, and I’m noticing something else that is starting to really bother me. I’m seeing moms get stressed out about the words “self care.” I’ll talk to moms and they will say something like “I’m off to do XYZ because…you know…self care.”

Why? Because it’s become this additional thing that our society tells us to add to our to-do list.

And our to-do lists really don’t need anything else added to them. We already feel enough pressure.

I have two favorite quotes that put these pressures into perspective, the first coming from friend in my head Tina Fey about the pressure we already have whenever it comes to our looks.

“Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

If you haven’t read her book, Bossypants, go buy it because its just awesome.

Then, there is this gem from Bumani Laditan from her book, Practical Parenting:

“How To Be a Mom in 2017 Make sure your children’s academic, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, physical, and social needs are met while being careful not to over stimulate, underestimate, improperly medicate, helicopter, or neglect them in a screen free, processed foods free, plastic free, body positive, socially conscious, egalitarian but also authoritative, nurturing but fostering of independence, gentle but not overly permissive, pesticide-free two-storey, multilingual home preferably in a cul-de-sac with a backyard and 1.5 siblings spaced at least two years apart for proper development also don’t forget the coconut oil.

So we’ve gotta think about our looks, how we’re measuring up as a parenting, and now we have to invest huge amounts of time (and money!) into all this self care? I’m calling bullishit.

Why? The average mom just doesn’t have the extra time or money to invest in it and that’s the truth. Self care has become sort of a privilege in our society. If you have time and money to hire a babysitter and step away from the pressures of every day motherhood then you have it all, but what about everyone else who doesn’t?

Don’t get me wrong: it’s so incredibly important that we are taking care of ourselves. We have to make it to our regular doctor’s visits. We have to eat healthy. We have to workout. We have to take time to be by ourselves. These are crucial parts of just being a human being. But self care doesn’t need to cost money. It doesn’t need to be stressful. And it shouldn’t be something that makes us ever feel less than someone else.