Don't Put All of Your Yoni Eggs In One Basket

I say "shit" alot and I'm not sorry

Hello, September!

It’s been quite a week, but also quite a summer. The world is on fire, or it’s underwater, or it’s unjust, or it simply doesn’t make sense. 

I’ve spent a lot of the past week trying to process heartbreak around New Orleans and in the Northeast. And then trying to process my Texas/SCOTUS rage. And so much other bullshit crazy that’s getting dished out, on top of my own shit.

I know I’m not alone. 

I know there’s always more coming. 

It’s exhausting, this constant subjection to so many emotions while feeling powerless about so much shit gone awry. 

That’s why it’s so important to look after ourselves. 

I mean, really look after ourselves, as part of a daily practice.  

So, yeah, we’re going to talk about self-care and wellness, but really talk about it. The two sometimes are treated as interchangeable. But really, we are aiming for wellness via self-care.

Let’s look at what the World Health Organization (WHO) has to say. They define self-care as “the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider.”

Further, they define wellness as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

The WHO is an international health council. It’s not a body of self-appointed practitioners who pay annual dues to an organization to forward their field. It’s a group of the world’s smartest thinkers and scientists tasked with the health of all of the humans on the planet. They look at historical health, where we are now, and our future needs. This is big picture stuff, so I’m inclined to go with their thoughts. 

They employ some pretty powerful action words:

• Promote

• Prevent

• Maintain

• Cope 

• Support

• Well-being

They also talk about self-care as a community and family process, which is important because our communities need some love right now, but we’re going to focus on us. Based on the WHO, here is our working definition:  

Self-care is the creation of a personal ecosystem that supports the maintenance and promotion of health and the prevention of dis-ease, while forging tools for coping with adversity and dis-ability. It’s an ever-evolving process of preserving your health and supporting your well-being (physical, mental, emotional).

Notice how there is no mention of anything about spa days, mani-pedis, bubble baths or scented candles. There is nothing referencing coffee drinks or yoni eggs. In fact, the whole multi-billion-dollar¹ self-care industry is not mentioned anywhere among the WHO information. Because all of that stuff isn’t really self-care, it’s more along the lines of self-soothing.

Not everything we think of as self-care is really self-care. Self-care is a support system you create to help you thrive and survive. Self-care is playing the long game. Self-soothing is a more temporary fix, it provides comfort or distraction, gets you through the moment, or can be a reward for doing something difficult or an achievement. 

Self-soothing can be a vital part of self-care: like listening to a podcast to help focus on a boring task, blaring happy music to get you pumped up in the morning, treating yourself to a fancy coffee treat once a week. Or the token action of the self-care movement: bubble baths. 

Seriously, somehow, taking a bubble bath has come to represent the epitome of self-care. That and its opposite element, the scented candle. Somewhere between all of that aromatic fire and bubbly water, our lives are supposed to transform themselves into something calm and manageable. But, for reals, both of those are more about self-soothing. 

Self-soothing isn’t a bad thing, unless it is used as an escape and to excess. Taken to any kind of extreme, self-soothing is bound to lead to some sort of hangover: financial, emotional, or physical.  Think bingeing on alcohol, disordered eating, shopping, sex, gaming, etc. 

Self-soothing is one of many tools in your self-care tool kit—which is more of a conceptual thing, than a tangible object. Yes, you can have a lovely real-life tool-box (or bag or basket) filled with things like a crystal face roller, coloring books, a weighted blanket and some essential oils. But your real self-care tool kit doesn’t cost any money. It exists in your routines and actions, your diet and exercise, your yesses and nos, your bedtime and screentime, your daily practices and rituals.  

There is an overlap between the self-care and self-soothing, and it’s fuzzy, at best. Creating a structure for yourself where Sunday night is sacred time for you to rest and recharge for the week ahead is self-care. Spending part of that evening in the tub with scented candles is self-soothing. Meditation will soothe you in the moment, but a regular meditation practice rewires your brain for long-term health. Self-care is wanting to create positive change in the world. Self-soothing is making rage-donations of money to trusted organizations who can engender those changes. Self-care is cultivating that reliable toolbox of methods for coping with life, and knowing which tools to employ when. 

During September, we’re going to use this space to examine our self-care practices and habits. This begins with an awareness. To start things off, I invite you to bust out the wide lens and look at your self-care as a big picture, not a collection of little acts. What are you doing to contribute to the health of your whole ecosystem? But also, how are you undermining the foundation? Try to distinguish between your self-care and self-soothing. Then, try to discover the self-soothing behaviors that don’t serve you. 

As always, I’m playing along, and doing lots of reading and learning to share with you.

1. According to different internet sources, the self-care industry is valued at anywhere between 10 billion to 450 billion dollars in 2021. This has a lot to do with the concept of self-care being wide open, and everything from nail-polish to coffee to luxury goods are marketed to consumers as vital to their well-being and self-care. Only a teeny-tiny fraction of that falls into the new-age snake-oil category.