Radical Self-Care

At the beginning of each month I come up with a few intentions to follow. Sort of like a mini-new year when the calendar page turns. I find this to be helpful, more so than a huge resolution on January 1st. Some months I follow the intentions well, other months not so much.

For May I am determined though, and only 4 days in I am doing pretty good!! A big intention this month is to practice Radical Self-Care. The idea for this came about through my journaling the past few months and was solidified when the challenge for May in the Mama Scout Laboratory for Creative Living group over on Facebook became Radical Self-Care. (Check out the MamaScout blog. That’s where the group was born. Amy does some awesome work).

I have decided for the month of May to do a blog series on what Radical Self-Care means to me and how I am practicing it. Each Monday I will post a different aspect of and how I am following, self-care. 

To me Radical self-care means going above and beyond the things that I already do each day to take care of myself: waking at least an hour before the girls do in the morning to start my day off with journaling, coffee and prayer. That centers me and prepares me for the day ahead. I also take some time during afternoon rest to sit with a cup of tea and read or knit for a few minutes. That is a centering time for me to prepare for the late day things we do.

I sat to art journal a little bit at the end of April what RADICAL self-care means to me. I had no preconceived ideas what it meant, I just sat down when the five year old was doing her art to do art along with her. It ended up looking like this:

A theme that ended up coming out was that I need to be more positive towards myself. Towards my body and my thoughts. So for this month that’s what Radical means for me: thinking of and viewing myself in a more positive way by talking about, thinking about and seeing myself a lot less negatively. For myself but also for my girls. Marie-Therese has begun telling me that I need to “stop being mean to yourself Momma!” at least once a day. I don’t even realize I am speaking in a not so nice way about myself until she points it out.

So this month I am going to focus on my positives, on what I am doing right, on how I am glowing. By taking care of my body better through more movement, more nourishing foods, more rest when it needs. I have decided to take a selfie each day as a way to be more radical—as a way to really LOOK at myself, not in a “hey this looks wrong”or “hey look at me”but as a way to see who I am. 

What does self-care look like for you right now?

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