With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we only thought it was only fitting to share some wise words below from the amazing Adele Maree, Body & Mind Coach and Author of Dear Selfless Mama:
Quite often as mother’s we spend a lot of our time at home. We begin to see our homes as our place of work, rather than somewhere to nourish our minds and bodies. We consider our next and only opportunities for self-care to come outside of the home – massages, manicures, or other superficial fixes. But what if we stopped looking for an external escape and started looking at creating a self-care haven at home? This shift in mindset can put us in a place that we start to value and integrate self-care throughout our day as a necessity, rather than treating it as an occasional luxury.
Let’s start by taking a look at why self-care is a must. We mums so often put the needs of everyone else in front of our own. While this may work in the short-term, it often leads to frustration, anxiety, depression, resentment, burnout and illness. Prioritising our own physical and emotional needs is just as important as servicing everyone else’s.
But how you may ask?
Here’s five simple steps to starting your own Stay-At-Home Self-Care System.
- Acknowledge and wholeheartedly believe that your self-care is important.
- Create a self-care haven at home. This can involve both routines and the physical environment. Start by thinking about what your day looks like. Are you getting enough sleep? Exercise? Is there space for a mindful moment (yes, even just a moment)? Nutritious food? How about your physical space, is it how you want it to be? Is it cluttered? Is there anything you could do without? Anything that you could add to help induce calm? A nice lamp? Essential oils?
- Once you have decided what things you would like to work on, take tiny steps towards making change in those areas.
- Let the people close to you, including your children, understand what you are doing and why. Change is easier with the people we love supporting us.
- Reflect and focus on how much better you feel after making changes to your routines and environment – even the small wins. Reflecting on the positives will help motivate you to maintain your new self-care rituals.
It’s not always easy to get started, but self-care starts in the home, and it starts with you.
- Adele Maree xx