For years, self-care was the goal I kept setting and kept failing to reach.
When I first wrote about this back in 2018, I was a young military spouse with two little girls, both under the age of five. My days were a blur of someone else’s needs … feeding, soothing, cleaning, keeping tiny humans alive. “Self-care” felt like one more impossible item on a list I was already drowning under. I wanted to prioritize myself. I genuinely did. But every year I set that intention, and every year it slipped through my fingers by February.
I’m in a very different season now. My girls are older. My husband is retired after a long career. And I’ve done years of real healing work in the time between then and now. What I’ve learned is that self-care wasn’t something I kept failing at because I lacked discipline. I kept failing at it because I misunderstood what it actually was.
How My Self-Care Has Changed Over the Years
Back then, I thought self-care was a treat. Something pretty I’d earn once everything else was handled. A bubble bath. A pedicure. Ten quiet minutes with a coffee that was still hot. And those things are lovely. But they were never going to fix the bone-deep depletion I was running on, because they were treating the symptom, not the cause.
What self-care looks like for me now is quieter and far less Instagrammable. It’s the boundary I set so I’m not pouring out energy I don’t have. It’s the therapy appointment I don’t cancel. It’s going to bed instead of pushing through. It’s noticing when my nervous system is activated and actually doing something about it instead of white-knuckling my way to bedtime. As someone who lives with anxiety and combat PTSD, I’ve come to understand that self-care isn’t a reward I get for surviving the day. It’s part of how I make the day survivable in the first place.
That’s the shift I want to offer you, especially if you’re where I was: self-care is not the thing you do after everything else is done. For a lot of us, it’s the thing that makes everything else possible.
Why Self-Care Feels So Hard (Especially If You’re a Caregiver or a Survivor)
If prioritizing yourself feels impossible, I want you to know there’s usually a real reason and it’s rarely laziness.
For many of us, especially women, mothers, and people raised in homes where our needs weren’t centered, putting ourselves last isn’t a habit. It’s a deeply worn groove. We were taught, explicitly or not, that taking care of ourselves is selfish, that everyone else comes first, that our worth is measured by how much we give. Add a trauma history to that, and rest can feel unsafe, stillness can feel threatening, and slowing down can feel like something you have to earn.
Naming that is the first step. You are not failing at self-care because you’re undisciplined. You’re struggling with it because somewhere along the way you absorbed the belief that you don’t deserve it. You do. Unlearning that is some of the most important work there is.
How to Actually Make It a Priority
Here’s what finally worked for me, after years of failed January resolutions.
Make it small and make it consistent. A sustainable five minutes every day will do more for you than an elaborate self-care Sunday you manage once a quarter. Tiny and repeatable beats big and rare, every single time.
Build it into a rhythm, not a wishlist. I anchor self-care to things I already do. It rides along with my morning coffee, my evening wind-down. If you want a place to start, my post on building a morning routine for anxiety breaks down the habits that have helped me most.
Let it be unglamorous. Drinking water, taking your meds, getting sunlight, going to bed on time. This is the real foundation. The pretty stuff is a bonus on top.
Release the guilt. This is the hardest one and the most important. You are allowed to take care of yourself without earning it first. Full stop.
Self-Care Ideas, Sorted by What You Actually Need
Some days you need to quiet your mind. Other days your body is begging for movement or rest. Sometimes it’s your spirit that’s running on empty. Instead of one long list, here are ideas sorted by what you might actually be needing in the moment.
For Your Mind
- Read a few pages of a new book
- Spend ten minutes with an adult coloring book or a creative project
- Start a journal, or write a letter you never intend to send to release what you’re carrying
- Declutter one small space (a drawer, a shelf, three things off a countertop)
- Unfollow accounts that leave you feeling worse (a boundary is self-care, too — more on that in Toxic Family & Boundaries)
For Your Body
- Go for a walk, even a short one
- Take a warm bath with epsom salt
- Get sunlight on your face for ten minutes
- Get your nails done, or get dressed up for no reason at all
- Book the massage you keep putting off
For Your Spirit
- Pray, meditate, or simply sit in stillness
- Write down a few things you’re grateful for (I go deeper on this in my post on daily gratitude practice)
- Buy yourself flowers
- Listen to a playlist that lifts you
- Write a thank-you note to someone, or give back in a small way (volunteering has a way of refilling the giver)
For Your Rest
- Take the afternoon nap. Guilt-free.
- Make an easy dinner so you’re not on your feet all night — my go-to easy chicken dinners are built for exactly these nights
- Rewatch a comfort movie or show you love
- Make a warm cup of tea and do absolutely nothing with it
- Go to bed early, on purpose
Self-Care Is How You Thrive, Not Just Survive
If there’s one thing I wish I could go back and tell that exhausted young mom writing this post in 2018, it’s that taking care of herself was never going to be the thing she got to after. It was always going to be the foundation everything else was built on.
You are worth the time it takes to care for yourself. Not once you’ve earned it. Not once everything else is handled. Now, as you are, in the middle of the mess. That’s what it means to move from surviving to actually thriving and you are so much more capable of it than you’ve been led to believe.
Start small. Start today. Start with one thing.
Drop your favorite form of self-care in the comments. I’m always adding to my own list, and yours might be exactly what someone else reading needs to hear.
NOTE: This post was originally published in January 2018. It has been significantly expanded and rewritten.
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