What is self-care and how do we achieve it?

Why do I find it so difficult to take care of me and my needs first? Or to say it another way, why is it so easy for me to take care of everyone else first? I think regularly, I am going to change. I will put me first this time. I pray about it. I journal about it and I talk to my friends about it but I continue to find myself in this same situation.  It's not that I don’t have the drive or the desire to accomplish self-care, I do. It’s not that I don’t have the resources or the support around me to help achieve this goal, I do. So what is the real reason or reasons that hold me back? If you ask a self-help guru they might say something like, set goals, be kind to yourself, acceptance is key. I work on that. That same guru may continue to say, set aside time, even if it is only 20 minutes per day, small steps to bigger goals. I find I am able to accomplish that for one day and then this happens; three teenage daughters, with three very different personalities, three very distinctive schedules and my brain overloads. Mom, I have a game today. Mom, I have a concert tomorrow. Mom, can you help me study, memorize, edit, blow dry my hair, organize my room, bring me to a game, help me with community service, schedule appointments, email, order my school books, bring me to a dance... and round and round we go. I am not complaining because someday all that chatter will cease to exist in my home. Oh there will be other sounds; different sounds but it won’t be the sounds of my three all together at the same time. 

There are times I feel a slight disappointment that I did not work outside our home. I had dreams and aspirations of being a great therapist and guiding individuals through their own personal journeys. I worked hard for my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and enjoyed working with the clients that I had. There are times I wonder if I worked part time, maybe, it could have been beneficial for me and I could have continued to help others. I do believe that would have been a great option all around but then I would have had missed certain opportunities. Times like when I helped shelve all those important library books in the school library. I would have missed helping in art class where my hands were just as dirty as the students. I would have missed helping serve school lunch and listening to all the funny stories that the kids told about their parents at home. I would have missed organizing fundraisers; food drives, and school opportunities where my kids and others learn about giving back and being a part of something bigger than themselves. I would have missed all the home and away games that I traveled to usually with Dunkin Donuts for the whole team. I would have missed seeing my daughters move through their years as silly and innocent, awkward and insecure to confident, beautiful and inspiring. 
On the flip side I know there are many mothers and fathers that have to go to work. They do not have a choice. There is also the parent that chooses to work outside the home, that works too. There is not a right or wrong answer to any of it. It only comes down to what is right or wrong for each one of us. We have to decide what path our lives are going to take. We have to find what will make us truly joyful and fulfilled. 

What I haven’t been able to grasp in all of this is how to find pure joy in doing something when I know one of my children need me. Always on the days that I fill my schedule, something will happen to interfere with how my day will go. I believe this to be a universal problem and not a “me” problem. I believe that this will happen to each of us many times. If I did not have those little hiccups of disturbance I would truly miss something important with idle busyness. Because isn’t that what most of us tend to do. We fill our time, our days, seconds and minutes with little nothings. We don’t realize that is what we are doing. We believe that we have big responsibilities and so many things to get done, so many that most of us are over stressed and over raged especially while driving. There has to be a happy medium between all of this.Why can’t self-care be in the alone coffee break. Why can’t it be the article we take the time to read, the book we finally finish, or the blog we decide to write. Why can’t it be in the simple, small doings than a grandiose fantasy of what we envision self-care to look like. Just maybe our definition of self-care is what is wrong. Self-care can be somewhere we meet, connect, love, and de-stress. Somewhere we can be present for our family and at the same time be kind to ourselves. 

And so there it is back to the self-help guru... I will be kind to myself. I will be careful of the dialogue that I use when I am in my head. I will accept each day that comes and with it the knowing that what I was able to accomplish was good enough. I will set some small attainable goals so I am not disappointed and feel like I am a big F...failure, even when I mess up the Thanksgiving gravy. I will realize that when I am praying, journaling, and talking to my friends about the need of taking care of myself that in that moment that is exactly what I am doing, taking care of myself. I will breathe, in and out and back in again. I will know that I have done my best. In the end isn’t that exactly all we can do to honor and love our loved ones and selves by being our best. Even if our best is doing nothing other than to give a hug and say, “I am proud of you and I love you.” Now that doesn’t seem so difficult after all!