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❤️🩹Next Sober From Bullshit Recovery Club is Monday, October 18. Register here.
💀 October writing workshop theme is “HALLOWEEN.” It will be terrifying and ridiculous and costumes are super encouraged. Register here (Sunday, 10/31, 10am - 12pm PST).
Questions? Just ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Last night I ate a whole pizza to myself.
This was after a day spent swimming in overwhelm. I’d written out my to-do list no less than three separate times, hoping in a sad, magical-thinking way that by writing it over-and-over the conundrum of time would resolve itself, or some portal to flow would suddenly become available, or I would discover some new pathway to completing All The Things that previous lists had kept hidden (so many weird mental gymnastics when I could just, you know, get to work). I got very very little done, instead laying on the floor for the ten minute breaks between client sessions, and freaking out about all that has to happen before I head out of town this weekend to officiate a wedding, which, now that you mention it, is also freaking me out.
There are specific signals my body gives me when I’m hitting saturation: after months of ease and stability, I’ve been back to the chiropractor every other week to deal with a chronic sacroiliac joint imbalance. I’m all-day distracted by the low-grade discomfort this causes even when I’m just sitting. I’m exhausted, but sleep is fitful. I’m not responding to text messages or emails. And, I’m forgoing the abundance of homemade food in my fridge for a frozen pizza that is delicious enough, but also serves a very specific purpose: feeding that thing inside me that I don’t know how to deal with other than numbing it out completely.
Eating a whole pizza to myself while the Giants vs Dodgers playoff game on the radio fills the silence in the background is not a problem in and of itself. Eating a whole pizza to myself can totally be a way I take care of myself. The overdoing can be joyful, and fun, worth the too-full-tummy, the subsequently sweaty sleep.
This was not that. This was a signal.
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The above image is the face one makes when one has spent the previous four years constructing one’s life in such a way that one no longer wishes to constantly flee one’s life, and is met with forces that would seek to send one back into the tailspinning mindfuck of hyper-productivity and never enough.
I knew I wanted to write about self-care this week, so I’ve been mulling over what this overused-to-the-point-of-meaningless term means to me.
Then I opened Instagram, and a friend had posted this:
HA. HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHA.
Admittedly, it feels good to be seen inside the stress.
I knew I wanted to write about self-care this week, and what it means to me. I’ve been mulling over the question: how do we know we are engaging in self-care that is actually helpful (and not just one more thing that feeds the capitalist beast or is just more work added to our plate or stress to our brains)?
Bubble baths and manicures are not going to counter the effects of internalized capitalism, nor resolve the inner conundrum of say, working for a healthcare start-up that is beholden to venture capital. And though these days my self-care does include long baths and fancy manicures, the way I know I am caring for myself is that I have access to myself.
Self-care is being fiercely protective of and utterly uncompromising with my ability to connect to my deeper self and truth. So, the question becomes, what is necessary for me to maintain that wellspring I have so painstakingly replenished?
Self-care is saying no. It’s telling the truth. It’s being the canary in the coal mine. It’s asking for support. It’s boundary work, that ferocious self-protection practice. It’s cashing in PTO (PTO!) to take some rest, and blocking off my calendar so no more meetings can be added. It’s being sweet and easy and kind and forgiving to myself—being relentless with shifting my self-talk. It’s all the practices that deliver me to myself, practices that run the gamut from exercise to quiet time in the bath to creatively expressing myself through nail art to yeah, pizza.
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Recognizing signals is everything, because when I notice something, I have a say over it. I spent a long, long, very long time training myself out of my signals. Listening is a relief, even though it’s often uncomfortable. I know now what to do with discomfort, and even when I make choices that go counter to my best interests, I’m so damn grateful that these days, too much pizza is the way I cope with tough stuff.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
⭐️We Are Not Scumbags: Pushing Back on the Narrative of “Once an Addict, Always an Addict.”
⭐️The Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club turns one year old this week!
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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