feamir:

just-call-me-ella:

I was talking to my mom the other day, and she said she was going to start going to the gym, because its important care for your body. I’m disabled w/ multiple chronic illnesses, so going to the gym is impossible for me. She seemed to realize this, and started to backtrack, saying like – its part of taking care of herself, and I interrupted and said, “Its okay mom. You and I taking care of ourselves look very different”. And thats what I would like you to know.

Taking care of yourself looks different. 

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like fruit smoothies and gym visits, cutting out sugar and weight training.

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like hospital visits, feeding tubes and ports. Needles and tests.

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like taking medication and lying down in a cool dark room.

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like getting any calories in their body that they can.

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like adding in more vegetables and trying to go outside to get sun more often.

For some people, taking care of themselves looks like seeing a therapist, keeping symptom journals, and practicing mindfulness, meds, or grounding techniques. 

We all have different needs. Please don’t feel bad about how you care for yourself just because someone else is able to do “more”, or their care is more performative or obvious. Please don’t look down on someone for caring for themselves in a way that you do not. Medication and rest are just as important as exercise and vegetables.

Keep doing your best to care for yourself, the best way you know how. Your self care and health is important, no matter what it looks like. 

Also, even for the same person, taking care of themselves will look different at different points in their life. Just in the last year I’ve gone through four of the above examples as my primary self care. And at first I felt guilty when taking care of myself no longer meant “getting exercise and eating veggies”, and instead meant “going to therapy and eating anything, literally anything at all no matter how ‘unhealthy’”. So it’s important to remember that needing different self-care doesn’t mean you’ve become a lesser person — it just means your body and mind need something different right now and that’s ok.