How to care for yourself
1: Find a poem or a song that you can examine, hold and wear because it fits.
2: Break down the delicate balance of chemicals that hold the strings to your joys and sorrows. Discover that sometimes the secrets to chemistry lie in a wholesome meal that boosts dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins.
3: If you can, let that email find you only when you’re ready to be found.
4: Examine your guilt. Pull it apart. Poke holes in it. Make it squirm. Stamp it out. You might need will power, you might need conviction. You don’t need guilt.
5: Allow pain to fill you up and hollow you out, until you collect new ways to make yourself whole again.
6: Take deep breaths that drift in filling your lungs, and leave you, freeing your thoughts.
7: Allow yourself pleasure, tingling nerve endings, decadence, butterflies, afternoon sex, massaged feet, a scream, a rant, the hot-warm embarrassment of a flagrant compliment, loud dramatic sighs, a nap so deep, so thick it leaves you unsettled, the gooey syrupy middle of rich dessert, heavy sobs and inappropriate laughter.
8: Know when to leave:
parties
relationships
jobs
and cities.
9: Take a day off, only to soak in the pleasure of knowing the length of your day as yours and yours alone.
10: Acknowledge the sky, the nobility of trees, the symmetry of flowers, the slick beauty of brightly coloured worms and larvae throbbing like wet jewels under leaves, the composure of cats, the openness of dogs and the silence that contains the sounds of birds, leaves, breeze and water.
11: Care for yourself like you would care for someone else.
12: Own comfortable shoes.
