Making time for me….
21st January 2018
Making time for me is not something that we find mothers do very well.
To be honest we don’t do it well ourselves, and we don’t know many mummies who prioritise themselves (actually no, can’t think of any). Especially when our little ones are little. When we have a baby who wants to be held, or rocked, or jiggled, or fed. When we have little mouths to feed, faces to wipe, bottoms to clean, tiny clothes to wash (again).
There’s always something that your family needs that seems more important than that something you wanted. A soak in the bath. A few chapters of your book. A snuggle up with a magazine. A nap. A phone call with a friend. A class at the gym. An early night. A hair cut. A run. A baking session. A manicure. A swim. A craft session. A catch up on the news. A massage. Whatever that thing is that restores you, that recharges your spirit and decompresses you again so that you can be you. The best version of you, not the slightly ratty, frazzled, stretched to the max you. Somehow it seems selfish, we feel guilty, we think something else deserves that time more. It feels indulgent, somewhere we feel like we don’t deserve it and we should give that time to something else. Someone else.
It’s bonkers. It doesn’t make any sense, we all know that we have to look after ourselves. We’ve all seen the quotes “you can’t pour from an empty cup”, “self-care is not selfish”…. but there’s a little goblin of self-doubt in us that keeps us pushing ourselves to the bottom of the list.
So, here we are in mid January, it’s rainy and grey and payday is dragging its heels. We challenge you to do something this week for you, and try to keep doing it every week from now on. Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t pan out some weeks. Just try again.
Ask your partner to support you, they love you and they want you to feel good, and they need you to look after yourself as well as you look after everyone else.
We promise to do it too. We know we feel better for it. And our families feel better for that. x