Over the last few months, I have been struggling with my ever-increasing need to care for myself. Of course I have always had to deal with self-care, as middle-aged single woman, it is my primary responsibility. I, like most adults, pay bills, wash laundry, take out the trash, clean out the litter box and file my taxes. But as of late I have discovered totally new levels of self-care that were previously unknown to me.
I feel like I have taken on a new full-time job called radical self-care. I have so many medical, massage and physical therapy appointments. I have several yoga, exercise, stretching and walking sessions each week. Plus I have been doing a lot more food buying and home cooking as well as regularly testing my blood sugar and tracking my food intake.
During this same time, I have also focused on taking care of my home, my finances and my businesses. I feel totally inundated with the element of Earth, which for an Air person feels positively maddening.
I want so much to escape, to fly away, to get above it all. I keep sketching out ways to make sense of all this sensate activity, trying to find a way to “get a handle” on it all. And I am losing the battle. I feel out of my element both literally and figuratively.
Enough already with all this Earth!
But I cannot make it go away. I find myself going to bed exhausted earlier and earlier, and waking up earlier and earlier. I am still not a morning person, but egads, I am now awake by 7am without an alarm most mornings. This fact alone is alarming to me!
And if that were not enough, I am also, dare I say it, making some headway toward some fundamental healing in my legs and hips. I cannot reverse the arthritis, but I am regaining some movement in areas I thought were damaged beyond repair.
But all this movement and self-nurturing comes at a price. I cannot over-commit anymore. I cannot go more than a few days without needing time off to relax and recuperate. I cannot go without eating a nutritious meal at least four times a day. I need 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night. I have to move my body daily to maintain the progress I have made physically. And I have to set boundaries with friends, colleagues and students to make sure I have the time not only to keep my commitments but also to take time out just for my own needs and interests.
In short, this focus on earth has made me grow up and start acting like a self-respecting adult. And you have no idea how irritating that is for me. So tonight, I have a plan. I am going to throw caution to the wind, and I am going to take some time out for me to just be a kid. I am going to watch TV, play games, cuddle with my calico and stick my tongue out at the whole world. Yeah, I am going to focus on what I want and do things that just make me happy. And I will be taking care of my inner child and giving her the best night she has had in a long time.
Oh wait, that is just another way to engage in self-care. Crap! See what I mean? This radical self-care is insidious! Sigh …
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".