Self Care & Hot Chocolate

Good morning!

As I woke up this morning, I immediately thought 2 things. One, that I was feeling good, two, that I still needed some good self-care this morning before doing anything.

Living with a mental illness, in my experience, has done that to me. Self-care has become a vital part of existence. Not just to feel good, but in order to remain functional. In order to keep away the guilt of ‘being a burden’ I need to keep floating above water in order to feel confident about myself. And really, the time for self-care is not always when I am deep in my pit of despair, or confused and needing help. I have found myself, especially now on medication, to be a precarious balancing act of chemical cocktails, and if one element (stress, anxiety, etc) becomes too present then everything goes out of whack. The self-care comes the minute anything may be off. The minute too much anxiety kicks in, the minute I just feel that something is ‘off’. And around and between all that- I want to do my day as well and intensely as I can.

So for me, this morning, it was a lovely cup of hot chocolate and some pages out of my favourite book.