What We Call Self-Care Doesn't Last

Most of what we call self-care is something that makes us feel better for a moment.

And then it's gone.

I was listening to my teacher on a call when she said that healing and transformation only happen in presence.

It made me think of all the times I needed healing and where I went looking for it. The first sip of wine, a warmth filling my body, the first exhale I'd had all day. A warm bath with a book. Sex, my body alive in all its sensation, oblivious to any thought.

Transcendental. And gone the moment it was over.

As soon as the glass was empty, my clothes were on, the bath drained. I was left with what was. And how confused that would leave me. Isn't this self-care?

These acts were certainly meeting the need in the moment. But once the buzz or the high or the warm wet relaxation dried up, there it was. The need. The constant inner vibration and static. The desire for more. That quiet question: is this it?

If changing the way I felt and avoidance were jobs, I could have made a career out of them. I drank, moved, took anti-depressants and fucked my way through deaths and divorces. Economic downturns? Blinders on booking flights across the ocean and shopping. I couldn't feel my reality, let alone look at it.

Isn't self-care being packaged in a cocktail, a cream, another body and sold to us as the way, when what we've really been thirsty for is permission to soften, feel good, take up space in our own lives? Nobody is asking what you're actually trying to get away from. No one profits off you relying on your body's wisdom.

After several decades of reaching outside myself, I reached a dead end. I surrendered. No wine. No more casual sex. No trips. No shopping. I started to listen to what was there, moment by moment.

When I stopped trying to change the way I felt, the way I felt started to change. I could breathe. I softened. And I realized this was the erotic act. Not the wine. Not the sex. This. Being present with what was. The pleasure of arriving to myself, as an altar, with my arms tightly hugging me back, was the embrace I had been looking for.

I witness the women I know and work with running the same errand. Different products, different people. Still empty. She doesn't know yet that she was always the source.

And somewhere in that turning toward, she turns on.

What she finds is never out of reach. A few moments of quiet breath before she reaches for anything. A hand on her own chest. The question: what do I actually need right now? Usually the answer is smaller than she expected. A moment to soften. Permission to be.

That's where transformation and healing begin.