How to Feel Like a Person Using Itty-Bitty Self-Care

As a culture, we've misunderstood self-care as spa days, massages, retail therapy. Self-care is actually a series of practices that brings you closer to your real and full self. It is an act of self-love and claiming--This is the real me. I want to be her. I will walk toward her and embrace her with this one act.

Many of us have particularly challenging parenting roads to walk. Traditional self-care is completely inaccessible. When we cannot leave our children's presence for even a moment, we cannot make it to a yoga class, go for a hike, or even attend an in-person support group. The list of self-care ideas that are inaccessible to us is a mile long.

Yet, we also need and deserve to feel like a full version of ourselves.

We want to walk toward our full selves.

We wish for acts of love and claiming that fit into the real complexities of our daily lives--Doable self-care.

Itty, bitty, tiny self care.

We may resist these acts of itty, bitty self care because they don't fill the hole inside us. They are not enough. We may be afraid that if we let them in, we give up on the part of us that cries out for more. Itty, bitty self-care does the opposite. It declares that we deserve something, now. Something that fits in our real life. Not the fantasy. The reality of small steps toward feeling like a person.

What makes you feel joy? What makes you feel alive? What gives you grounding? What wakes you up to the present? What makes you feel like a person? What feels like "you"?

Are there actions that move you toward yourself that can happen in 1, 2, 5, 10 minute increments?

• Stretching

• Breathing

• Using the bathroom

• Eating food when hungry

• Drinking water

• Closing your eyes

• Listening to music

• Humming or singing

• Reading

• Lighting a candle

• Chewing gum

• Stepping outside

Itty, bitty self-care fits into the real gaps that exist in your day, when you can make a choice that leads you back toward yourself. As you welcome these moments of daily self-care, you welcome yourself, whole and present, into your real life.

Self-care is not the exclusive purview of those with time and resources to access it. Instead self-care is any action, no matter how tiny, that leads you back home to yourself and supports you toward the person you are becoming. Tiny self-care fits in the real openings in your real life, making it acessible even for those of us with challenging parenting journeys.