Excavate Self Care

Dear community,

We hope your fall season has been full of harvest and togetherness! If there has been struggle for you, we hope you are finding the support you need. How are you feeling now as we are beginning our journey through the darkest season in the northern hemisphere? 

Throughout fall Angela Carolina and I have been deep in our own transitions. Angela has been busy curating the Healing Helix Community Hub in Chaparral, NM and discerning the current local needs which the space may be able to fulfill. My family got to visit in October! Playing in the space made me wish for a space in the northeast to serve my own community. 

Until early December, I was busy with my little one (who we are in a pre-adoptive phase with now) for 12 weeks of family leave. Spending time together in that way was sweet and sacred. My first day back to my full time work was Dec. 5…in the midst of all the sickness that comes with starting childcare followed by doubts about capacity to manage it all! I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make sure I have robust self-care systems in place as I settle back into leadership for now and adding back my full time teaching load this spring. It was impeccable timing when a dear colleague reached out recently, on behalf of a teacher on her team, to inquire about resources for teachers to take good care of our physical well-being. Let’s excavate…

When you think about caring for yourself, what comes up for you? What do your internal scripts around caring for yourself sound like? Where do you feel what is coming up in your body? I ask these questions because my own nervous system defaults very easily to productivity mode. My ADHD brain struggles to choose rest even when I am completely drained. It is actually hard work to choose to care for myself because my default mode resists it robustly. I think I am not alone in the field of education – if you have chosen to make a career out of your impulse to care for others then it’s likely you also struggle to prioritize your own wellbeing. If this resonates with you then a potential invitation is to make space for resistance to taking time to care for yourself. To work with it – through it – we first need to see and hold it. The good news is that you don’t have to wait for it to go away to begin to choose wellbeing!

Your physical wellbeing needs and preferences are best curated by yourself, guided by any medical and/or wellness providers whom you trust. This winter, how will you tend to yourself with sleep, nourishing food, hydration, movement, stillness? It’s ok if it’s different now than it used to be! Allow yourself to feel resistance to these kinds of changes. I used to run long-distances – like 10 miles at a time. I no longer have time or the fitness to do this. Because of my resistance to this change in my capacity, it took me years to accept that 3 miles is a fine distance for me to run at this time in my life. Rather than tell you what you should do, I will share what I’m working on this winter to use as a spring board to reflect on your own practices. Please make a chart or drawing for yourself to imagine and plan how you will care for these different areas of your own physical wellbeing:

Sleep: I will be actively working on increasing nighttime sleep with my little one and a EI sleep consultant – woohoo for help!

Nourishing food: For the last couple of years my body kept giving me inflammation-related signs that I needed to decrease my sugar intake and I have made a commitment to do that. Mindfulness practice and behavioral science shows us that the best way to stop doing something is to actually start doing something else which replaces it. So, I’ve made a simple replacement for dessert with a little bowl of dark chocolate chips and almonds or seltzer with lime and cranberry juice. It took a couple of months but I am now in the habit of reaching for one of these things when I want a treat, and I feel more confident moving into the holiday season in which sweets are abundant. 

Hydration: It’s easy for me to drink lots of water in the summer but the colder months make me want coffee instead. In the past I started heating my water and adding lemon. More recently I try using a straw, which somehow makes the water more appealing, or adding a splash of cranberry juice.

Movement: Cardio and lifting have always been good medicine for my brain and body when it comes to movement, but it’s been more challenging to maintain my old schedule now that I am a mama. So, sometimes the exercise is a walk with my little one or I prop the laptop on the crosstrainer so I can get my work done without compromising my need to move and sweat. When I can’t do a yoga class (which I do asynchronously now in case I get interrupted) I stretch with my little one. He loves a book we have that shows toddlers doing basic yoga postures. I do them and he tries to do them too – even the deep breaths. Yes, a 13-month-old can take deep breaths on purpose when it’s modeled!!! 

Stillness: I’m very excited to report that after about a year of struggling to find a new, reliable routine for my daily meditation practice I have been able to do it just before going to sleep for the last three weeks now. For a long time my goal of increasing night time sleep kept me from sitting awake for 10 more minutes. The switch for me was that I was getting really irritable and remembered that meditation is good preventative medicine for irritability. 10 more waking minutes are worth it. 

Please take care of your physical wellbeing this winter! 

With love and gratitude, 

Lauren