This Is Me Taking Care of Myself
February 5, 2025 – This was going to be a brilliant posting about how the upheaval in our country since the inauguration can affect us as adolescent service providers, how to take care of ourselves through it all, how to be there for our young people, and what to do going forward. It was going to be such a wise and helpful post!
Then I decided that I wanted to write instead on the ways that grandparents are adolescent service providers, why grandparents can be invaluable members of the adolescent’s village, how grandparents can support parents, and why the nuclear family model is really ineffective for raising children and families. This too was going to be a wise and helpful post. One for the ages! It was going to go viral!
Here it is the morning when my blog post copy is due to my social media team, and there’s nothing. Nada. Zilch. A scattering of half-hearted half-finished drafts. I had a text typed to my team to let them know that this week’s blog wasn’t going to happen because so much has happened in my life this month. Then it dawned on me—just be honest. Just have a conversation. No need to be brilliant, wise, and helpful. Just be present—to myself, my parts, and to those of you reading this post. This is me taking care of myself.
Self-care has become one of those really good ideas that has gone quite sour. Many people don’t really understand what it means, try it out, and end up getting totally burned out. It becomes one more item on the to-do list, one more thing to shell out money that we may not have, one more thing to squeeze into an already overbooked calendar. Sometimes self-care looks very different than what we might expect.
On January 1 of this year, I got on a plane with two suitcases, six plant starts from some of my most precious houseplants, and my cat. We flew from the west coast where we’ve been living for the last 42 years to the east coast where I’m from. I came back home. The island where I lived with my husband, raised my kids, survived unbearable losses, and did the work that transformed not only my life but who I am will always be home to me. But my roots are in the southeast, and they’ve been tugging at me for some time now.
So we did a cross-country move. My 17-almost-18-year-old grandson has come to live with me too. I have a teenager in the house! In two weeks his best friend will be moving in with us as well. I will have two teenagers in the house! Then there was the inauguration with all that it has brought for me, my clients, my friends and neighbors—fear, uncertainty, overwhelm, and, for some, trauma. The house is slowly coming together but there are boxes everywhere, new sounds, new roads and routes, new routines. I’m close to my extended family again, and for the first time in 42 years, there are weekly visits, gatherings, and obligations. All delightful and welcomed. And all a bit overwhelming.
I had the great pleasure and privilege to have a wise clinical supervisor early on in my therapy career who prioritized self-care above all other clinical issues. Without self care, she said, you will not be able to fully show up to your clients. Self-care is an ethical process. Now I teach self-care to other providers and to my clients. Yet, when it came to my own self-care during this extraordinary time in my life, I lost my way. And my parts are letting me know!
There is a part that has a bit of panic when my task master part starts listing all that needs to be done. This task master doesn’t know how to prioritize, so everything is equally important—from getting my plant starts in pots to hanging fairy lights over my kitchen sink to getting my weekly client logs to my medical biller so I can get paid. So my poor overwhelmed part raises the alarm, my heart rate picks up, and I run around the house like the dogs in the Disney film Up—”Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!” Nothing gets finished. Like my half-written blogs, boxes are half unpacked, tables are half cleared, my diet is half healthy and half deadly.
I know the roots of these parts, like I know the roots that hold me here in this Virginia red dirt. I had a parent figure who told me consistently during my adolescence—just when I was learning how to take responsibility for my self, my things, my messes, when I was learning how to become a “functioning member of the household” — If you’re going to do something half-assed, then just don’t do it at all. Those words and their underlying meanings landed, took root, and vined their way through my psyche. Anything less than perfection is unacceptable. Aim high or don’t aim at all.
This morning as I sat in my new-old house (a lovely quirky 96-year-old home that seems like it was waiting just for me, so much so that it’s clear that the house does not belong to me but I to it), my fingers on the keyboard to cancel this week’s blog posting, I took a moment. I paused, took a breath, and noticed. And I sent out words of gratitude to Cece Sykes, Internal Family Systems trainer extraordinaire, who taught me this in-the-moment powerful tool.
I quieted my mind, took a sip of tea, closed my eyes, and listened in. I let my panicked part know that it wasn’t alone, it wasn’t responsible for everything that the task master was demanding. My part and I took a deep breath.
Then I turned my focus to my dear loyal companion, the task master, who has helped me build a life that I love. I let this part know that it is not for me to save my clients, my neighbors, the world from the evils that I perceive. My only job is to show up with my heart open and my feet firmly planted in my Ground of Being. Another wise voice in the Internal Family Systems world, Ann-Katrin Bockmann, recently reminded me that no matter the magnitude of the storm that tosses our boat about in the wild ocean, if we engage in responsive balance, keep in the center, our small craft will stay afloat. I let my task master know that some things are more important than other things. The pile of sheets can stay on the coffee table but my grandson needs a listening ear when the world takes him by surprise. It is not the task master’s job to prioritize—that’s mine. That’s something I am able to do.
I let my perfectionist part know that we are worthy and our work is worthy whether it’s perfect or a mess or anywhere in between. I invited this part that wants everything to be just so to wander through the house with me this morning. The cat toys are strewn across the floor signaling that my skittish feline is making herself at home. The kitchen sink is filled with dirty dishes left by my grandson which tells me that he ate a good meal. Boxes are stacked waiting to be unpacked like treasure boxes. I let this tender part know It’s all good. We don’t need to be brilliant, wise, or helpful. It’s all good.
Then I pulled out my computer and began to write, not half-heartedly but whole-heartedly. This is me taking care of myself. This is me showing up to myself. This is me finding my way back home to my Self.