Take Care Of Yourself: Why You Should Practice Self-Care
By: Deveney Marshall
After all of the craziness that’s been taking place over the past few years in our country, the word self-care has become often used in everyone’s vocabulary. The term self-care is well...self-explanatory. It simply means isolating some time away from everything else in life and caring for yourself.
As you grow older finding time for yourself becomes more of a challenge. With the freedom that comes with becoming an adult, so does careers, bills, friendship circles, and love-lives. Before you know it you won’t have any real time for yourself, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and downright stressed.
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When I turned 26 I realize just how burned-out I was. As a young woman working intensely hard to turn my dreams into reality, I don’t have much downtime. I normally work between 10-12 hour days, 5-6 days per week, and still attempt to maintain a social life. It wasn’t until one day my body decided to crash and I literally couldn’t get out of bed that I realized how fatigued I was. It became clear at that moment I needed to slow the hell down. I made a promise to myself, from that day forward, I would begin to take at least 2 hours for myself each day to do absolutely nothing, and take at least one weekend a month for myself as well.
Taking wellness days per week began to help a tad, but I still found myself feeling cluttered even when I was alone. After contemplating why my days off still wasn’t contributing to me feeling well, it finally occurred to me I wasn't practicing self-care as far as my mental health was concerned. As a black person, especially as a black woman, these last few years have been incredibly emotional, and the trauma I had been experiencing weighed heavier on my conscious than I thought.
I wasn’t protecting my spirit, and the outside influences of my day-to-day were affecting me mentally and spiritually. I thought if I ignored the negative things taking place around me then they wouldn't affect me, but avoiding the problems of the world only made me more numb to them, and not forget them. Once I was alone, I was forced to deal with my inner-thoughts and they were LOUD. It became apparent in order for me to begin to truly practice self-wellness I would have to learn how to deal.
I began to give myself permission to feel, and express whatever I was feeling about a particular topic in that present moment. It did wonders for my well-being, but unfortunately, when you’re an expressive black woman you get the label of being angry. However, my mental health was way more important than any person’s opinion of me. Once I fully committed to making the art of self-care a routine practice, I actually began to see improvements within myself. My skin glowed more, I became much calmer and noticeably happier. I grew into this person whose level of chill was even unrecognizable to myself.
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Now, I have the art of self-care down to a tee, and I just want to encourage others to do the same. Nothing in life should be more important than the state of your mental health. Start being kinder to yourself; Being a little more selfish. Take some real time to invest in you and your needs. There is nothing wrong with putting yourself first!
If you haven't developed a self-care routine I highly suggest you do so. I promise once you do, you’ll begin to see your life change for the better.
Happy Self-Care,
Deveney M.
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Meet Deveney Marshall, contributing writer to 247 Live Culture!