Learning to Take Care of Yourself

How to take care of yourself as a busy mom. These tips will help you practice healthy self-care.

Learning to take care of yourself is necessary because we cannot care for others well when we are running on empty. As moms we are constantly caring for others. From the moment our eyes blink open, we are caregivers.

It truly never ends. It is a beautiful gift and yet it can be hard. At times in our efforts to be productive, care of the kids, do the laundry, run the errands we find ourselves scheduling every single thing except for time to take care of yourself.

A few years ago, my husband’s doctor was talking to us and described a person as a three legged stool. He said one leg is your physical side, the other your emotional/mental, and the third your spiritual. When we are not caring for all aspects, we are a stool that is leaning.

This imagery has been imprinted into my mind.

Personally, there have been times where I ran on empty and was a leaning stool. I believed that in order to be a good mom I had to do all of the things and be all things. Naturally, this resulted in emptiness. No one does it all and we all must learn to take care of ourselves.

In order the cultivate the homes and families we desire, we must practice caring for ourselves. It is not self-centered to carve out time for yourself. It is simply acknowledging that caring for our families requires a healthy person.

So how do we learn to take care of ourselves?

We carve out the time for ourselves.

For myself, this means regular times of quiet, reading, drinking tea and coffee, fellowship with close friends and family. It means taking time to exercise and drink water. It means carving out space to write.

Often, we can be turned off by the words “self-care” because we envision expensive spa days or weekly manicures. While those things are nice, that is not what I am talking about here.

Instead it is implementing moments of caring for ourselves in the everyday moments of life. It is turning on music that fills your soul or drinking a cup of tea. Simple habits that bring joy to the everyday moments.

A simple rhythm I have is a cup of tea every evening. There is something about it that soothes my soul after the day. While I am home most evenings, there are some I am out and about due to a practice for kids or another event. Recently, I started using a tumbler from Teabloom which allows me to drink my tea on the go. There is even an infuser inside so I can use loose leaf tea. It is such a simple thing and yet this tumbler helps me take care of of myself.

My tea rhythm is ordinary and yet it has been woven into my days as a constant source of calm. What habits can you weave into your day?

Moms, we get to choose the rhythms that fill our homes. We can choose rhythms that include self-care but the point is that we have to choose to make time for it.