Extreme Self-Care

Inspired by Suzannah Evans’ blog for the Gladstone Library, we’re just chatting about how writers need to look after themselves at Hub HQ and about how we can look after our Hubsters. Building community is a good starting point. It helps to have people around you who understand. But there must be more we can do. It sure is a privilege and a joy to be a writer but we’re often fragile creatures, baring our souls in public and facing rejection at every turn. How do we look after ourselves?

We have our thinking caps on so let us know if you have ideas. In the meantime, it reminded me of something I had published in Mslexia. Enjoy! And look after your writing self.

E is for Extreme Self-Care

She told me I should practise Extreme Self-Care. When you have been through so much, she said, it is the only thing to do. So I have started pushing myself to my limits. I sit for five minutes longer each day in my daily meditation, watching extreme thoughts pass like extreme clouds across my mind's vista, as I slowly lose sensation in my legs. I have downloaded an app to monitor my progress and I post my times on Facebook. The app reminds me at intervals to just say no, records my salutations to the sun, demands to be submerged daily in a bath of Epsom salts.

Where once I woke to Chris Evans, now I wake to recordings of extreme affirmations: I accept you in all of your extreme distress. I love you from the extremity of your fungal toenails to the extremely split-ends of your hair.

I take extreme self-care when boiling the kettle, pay extreme attention as I sip my nurturing tea. I try extreme combinations: organic chocolate with turmeric tonic, Rescue Remedy infused in peppermint tea. I dunk gluten-free biscuits just long enough for them to not quite disintegrate. I am living on the edge.

I am pushing the self-care envelope to its limits. I keep to a strict timetable of rest and relaxation. I force myself to lie supine at regular intervals, book a punishing schedule of extreme massage, employ someone to stick needles in my  extreme meridians, walk barefoot to feel the extremes of hot and cold on the soles of my feet.

If I practise hard enough I may become a champion of extreme self-care. I could train a future generation in self-love. But not yet. I mustn't extend myself too far. I must be extremely careful.