Witchy Wednesday: Stress Self Care

So it’s been a couple of stressful weeks, and I don’t just mean my own medical stuff. Today is a good time to remind you that everyone has stressful scary awful stuff going on at any given time, and it’s valid. It’s not a contest: the stuff in my life doesn’t diminish whatever is causing your guts to misbehave and your shoulders to tense up in your own life. Today it occurred that other than the book, I don’t often share a lot of my own techniques for getting through, and perhaps I should share more.

This week I’ve been pretty low-energy. I had a fairly painful call with the Mayo Women’s Clinic on Monday that, unfortunately, set the wrong tone for my day, my anniversary (sorry SK), and my week. Much as I’d like to shake that shit off immediately, I needed a couple days to process. Those couple days were spent mostly in cozy fleece lined pajama pants and a warm sweatshirt while working from the couch, reading a new P.C. Cast book (Boudicca, which will indeed have a forthcoming review because it is AWESOME), and watching British crime dramas.

As generally happens with my emotional processing, today I found my fuck it. And so, the following is my “get out of funk” self-care routine, because self-care is not all about feeling good*. It’s about DOING good things for your body, mind, and soul. More often than not, doing good is hard.

1. Get the hell out of bed, take a long shower, and dress in actual clothes. No jammies. Real clothes, even if I’m not going to the office.
   • Please note, I draw the line at makeup. No way in hell.
2. Run the dishwasher (you’re welcome, horde members whose chore is the dishwasher today).
3. Laundry. Ugh.
4. Make real breakfast (in my case, because I’m on doc’s advice and some meds, spinach-laden scrambled eggs with cumin, garlic powder, pico de gallo, and guac).
5. Work, from my desk, without any distractions (tv, podcasts, music) for the morning.
6. Write a strongly worded, polite, heartfelt email to said clinic about my experience. Not to get anyone fired: I didn’t specify any one person, I spoke about the intake process itself. Will it matter? Meh, maybe not. But not saying anything guaranteed it wouldn’t matter, so at least I spoke up?
7. When the furbabies are done outside and I can close the door, start my simmer pot. The combination of spices smell amazing. If you’re magically inclined, it’s intended to be a whole-house self-care pot full of love, luck, health, prosperity, and peace. Six people and three fur-people live here. Health, luck, peace, and love are necessary elements in a household this big. I added ginger because I’ve been low energy lately, but the others are pretty standard for my house.
8. Self-Care Simmer Pot:
   • 3 bay leaves, for prosperity, health, and peace
   • 2 cinnnamon sticks, for health and renewal
   • ground ginger, for energy and health (yes there’s a theme here)
   • ground cloves, for protection and love
   • ground cardamom, for love (it was just our anniversary, after all, so a little extra love is on my mind)
   • 5 whole allspice, for compassion, luck, and healing
   • dried orange peel, for abundance, love, luck, and happiness (if you have an orange, slicing it up and adding slices to the pot works great, too)
   • Add all ingredients to a pot with plenty of water (I use a good sized sauce pan with about 5C water).
   • Bring the water to a boil, then turn down to simmer. Watch the water level: add water as needed for as long as you want the pot to simmer. When finished, dump remaining water outside or down the drain and wash pot as usual. Do not let the pot go dry on the stove (like a candle, this is only to be done when you’re available to monitor and stay safe).
   • NOTE: because the ingredients above are all from my kitchen cabinets and food grade, I used a regular cooking pot. If you use ANY essential oils or non-food-grade ingredients, you need to use a pan that is kept separate from food preparation.

*So I need to come up with a presentation for Paganicon next spring, because I perhaps foolishly applied to be a presenter and I got in. Yeesh. I was thinking about the word “good” today, and how meaningless it really is because there are so many meanings embedded into that word. When you say “I feel good” what does that mean? Healthy? Strong? Well? Powerful? Joyful? EPIC? When you do something to make you feel good, that can be helpful or harmful. Cake makes me feel good, but it isn’t good for me. Drugs make people feel good. Drinking can make people feel good, if numbing pain or forgetting is what they’re after. I have no good end to this aside, except to say I’m thinking about this and when I say “do something good for you” I mean this:

Do something today that makes you feel calm, or powerful, or relaxed, or useful, or needed, or loving, no matter how small it is, that brings you forward a step in your life and nourishes your mind, body, soul, or all three. That is self care, and it can be as simple as taking a few minutes to drink a cup of tea.