Self-Care in the Time of Covid

Wisdom and ideas from smart folks on Medium

Yesterday and today I read two stories and a comment on a recent piece of mine which speak eloquently to what taking genuine care of ourselves looks like.

It’s four am right now here in Eugene, Oregon, and I will be on my way to the gym in about ninety minutes. A cold front has marched in. All over the country it is cooling down, and that means more inside time. As Covid also settles in for a long winter with us, it’s even more important that you and I find ways to genuinely care for and love ourselves during such wonky times.

And, with all respect to the compulsive among us, and my hand is way up here, let’s not make self-care into just One More Thing I HAVE To Do Or I Am an Utter Failure.

First, this smart piece to set the stage from Forge, by Medium writer Catherine Andrews:

Catherine explores and exposes the all-too-common pressures of the Wellness Industrial complex to force care on us as an imperative, as a set of brutal HAVE-TOs, not as a series of small and exquisitely loving steps which reinforce ourselves and our right to feel loved by the single person who needs to love us most: ourselves.

What I love about her piece is that it parces out the difference between taking the bubble bath because it feels good and is joyful as opposed to doing it as yet one more set of performance metrics that I gotta do to live up to some ridiculous standard. That’s not self-care. That’s self-flagellation.

I LOVE this set of questions that she poses that we might ask before adding Acts of Self Care to our already long list of Shit I Gotta Do Or I’m a Bad Person:

• What was I doing in the moment right before I decided to do this?
• Why do I want to do this thing? Is the goal of this is to nourish me as I am or punish me for not being something or someone else?
• Does it feel like play or does it feel like work?
• Will this help my future self? (This is a good one when we come up against “shoulds” in self-care. Sometimes the should is shame-based, and sometimes it really would be a good idea to do the dishes and work out because it will make future you feel taken care of.)
• Does this meet or serve one of my core values?
• Is this tied to productivity or improving or fixing myself?
• Is there a way I can make this simpler or easier? (I ask this sometimes when I’m dreading meditation because I feel like I have to do like 30 minutes of it. I let myself do five or 10 instead.) (author bolded)

Before you bark at me about how there’s just no time, I would beg to differ.

For if there is no time for us there is no time for anyone.

To that may I please offer this typically powerful piece by my buddy Rosennab:

In her inimitable way, Dr. Bakari speaks to the powerful nature of self care in ways that make the point and get to the heart of why loving and caring for ourselves is so important and even more so right now:

The more you are required to give to others, the more you must have for yourself. We must take to heart the Norman Kelly phrase, “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

For women in particular, as Covid has stripped us of personal freedoms, earning power, options and career advancement while at the same time tripling down on burdens from homeschooling to housework to child care, our need to mind our minds, bodies and sacred selves takes on a whole other meaning.

For women of color in particular, Covid has brought down additional burdens, not only because of the Year of George Floyd, but that Covid has placed ever so much more pain and loss on communities of color. That means it’s even more essential that we as women, and we as community-builders and the glue that keeps us all whole, that we put ourselves first in that way that is anything BUT selfish.

Again from her article:

You think that you have too many responsibilities to put yourself at the center of your life. Work, family, organizations, and religious commitments squeeze you out of taking care of your needs, so you think. I contend that not putting yourself at the center of your life chokes you out.

I won’t insult you with the hackneyed airline analogy about the air supply. You and I, whether male or female, Black or White, whoever we are carry additional burdens right now. Failing to take the time to care for ourselves virtually guarantees that not only will we stumble, but we may not be able to get back up by ourselves.

Rosenna writes:

Self-care is a way of life. It doesn’t require grand gestures, just conscious ones.

This morning, I got a comment from a kind Medium reader Megan Charles which speaks very eloquently to this very thing:

It was under quarantine, I too realized I needed to do something different about my stress management. Unfortunately, I’ve always had a particularly cruel metabolism. So with the added stress of CV + being over 40 (when I can no longer take my body for granted and assume it’ll just do what I need it to do), I’d gained stress-weight and my sleep was abysmal. Granted, I had been gaining gradually over the last few years and doing little to curb it. And I had to accept exercise is not a means of weight loss, but to work the stress out of my body and I needed to build back my strength and endurance.

I had to take on a lifestyle change. In the last 4-months, I’ve returned to working out 4–5 days a week and scrutinizing my nutrition (cutting out complex carbs and booze, balancing out my macros for my needs), utilizing IF. As such, I’ve shaved off over 25lbs, gained much of it back in muscle, improved my cardio, and cut my body fat by 15%. But my motivation was not specifically weight loss. Nice side effect, but I think people can be distracted or laid back once they’ve hit a weight loss threshold. Then they get discouraged when they don’t continue to lose more. Instead I focus on the benefits of how I feel. I can now do things I physically couldn’t before, because I’ve built up the strength and improved my overall balance and endurance. Also, the tension physically trapped in my body (through my shoulders and neck) is gone (or more accurately managed because of the types of intense workouts and stretching I do). (author bolded)

You and I can do this. While my house is still little more than pile management, I have been able to begin to carve out places where I can stretch, and with a TV FINALLY set up I can now play my yoga tapes.

Each of us has had to juggle losses, some of them horrific. We have had to play Whack a Mole with stresses, again my hand is way up, and heartbreak. If you and I don’t put ourselves first, we end up dry husks. We need the critical nutrients of time for us, movement for us, good food for us, for without those things- unfettered by the HAVE-TOs- we fail at the one responsibility that only we can manage: self care.

Finally, back to Catherine’s piece. This nails it for me:

It took me 40 years to understand this, but self-care that’s done for you and you alone, that comes from a belief that you deserve care and joy and play and movement and good food and self-compassion — well, it stops feeling like an obligation or a letdown or a shield. Try out this idea around self-care: It gets to feel good. Because you are good. It’s as simple as that. (author bolded)

With that, I am masking up and heading for the gym on this cool morning. The rains are coming to Oregon, and that means renewal for scorched ground. I am renewing myself with exercise, good food, time for self-love in the time of Covid. For I have work to do, hopefully good work for others, but to do that I MUST care for myself first.

I hope you do too.