SO MANY THINGS HAPPENING:
🤘COMING NEXT WEEK: I’ll be announcing a very fucking special (if I do say so myself) three month hybrid group/individual coaching program that kicks off January 1st, 2023 so please stay the hell tuned for that.
✍🏽 October Writing Workshop is LIVE (3 spots left)! Grab your spot here (Sunday, October 23, 10am - 12pm PST). Join us for a special HALLOWEEN themed workshop. Come play, boo boos!
🥰 A VERY SPECIAL “ASK US ANYTHING” with Recovery Coaches Anne Marie Cribbin, Christina Hanks and Dani Cirignano (THAT’S MEEEE) (Monday, October 24, 5:30pm - 6:45pm PST). Join us for a virtual Q&A featuring sobriety and recovery. This will be a safe and brave space to ask the questions on your heart. Read more and register here.
✋🏽 Over in the SELF MADE community, October is devoted to all things BOUNDARIES. Boundaries can be tough to define, because they are are unique to each of us - the way I need to enact boundaries is different from how you do. This week it’s boundaries with ourselves; next week, we’ll explore how we keep boundaries with each other (shudder!).
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This was originally shared on October 12, 2021. It’s a nice revisit as we sink into BOUNDARIES month.
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.
*
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?
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.
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 taking some rest, and blocking off my calendar and heading to the mountains for a last minute weekend away. 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.
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA.
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Thank you.
Self care- ‘it’s all the practices that deliver you to yourself’. This essay captures the power of reaching for yourself through practice. After 130 days sober I’m in a hole. I wish I had reached for pizza instead of alcohol. I did the entire Camiño sober and then I slipped.
Your essay reminds me of how much I have done over the three years of self care practice. I really love myself when I’m sober. I’ll find a way to get back on the bus. It is a great joy to wake up this morning on the tip of Africa and to read your work. Your work is important. Thank you. I’m listening. My life just got too unstructured. Too many buzzy bars and tapas and the ever pressing booze culture. So I had a f*ck it moment. I caved. After 130 days of real self care I caved in.
I’m going back to the practices that I know deliver me to my self. I’m worth it!
YES! This is helpful: "Being relentless in shifting my self-talk". It is on-going and something I must be aware of always. So many years of negative self talk takes a lot of constant awareness to change. Thanks, Dani!
~Heather B