I’ve just come off the back of an horrific case of the voms and have to shoot off to work soon so there’s no illustrations at the moment but, depending on how I go this evening, I may just treat you fine folk to some shoddy imagery. 

So self care is a pretty big movement nowadays, bigger than cupcakes and over-the-top doughnuts and even succulents. Because it often incorporates all those things. If you want be hedonistic about baked goods and plants, self care is an excellent way to excuse those purchases as something other than reckless spending to fill the void in your soul. And that’s fine. Self care is different for everyone.

This came up in a conversation with a mate the other day, when she said the self-care is more than scented candles and luxe baths, but about protecting yourself and taking care of yourself. And “taking care of yourself” can sound very vague. It could mean anything. But if you want to get specific – and I often do – about what that means in a practical sense, you’ve got to think small. Like, planning a Bali solo retreat is nice, but then, I’m thinking about the stuff you do everyday. Those little things that make you feel like less of a piece of shit. Essentially, these things you do for yourself that are nice, but probs not the kind of things you’re going to get a lot of likes for Instagram (even if the world can’t see your likes anymore, you still can).

I’ve come up with three mundane, slightly too initiate examples of hardcore, practical self care which came up for me in the past week.

Self care is flossing your teeth. I know, people don’t do every day. Some people don’t do it all. But if you floss your teeth every day, you’re automatically better than those who don’t do it. So not only will you have improved dental hygiene and, by extension, will save money on dental procedures, you’ll also be bolstered by the fact that you’re superior to a significant proportion of scumbags.

Self care is treating yourself to a fresh tampon after you accidentally get poo on the string of the one you had in. Especially when you’re not due for a tamp change for hours. I don’t know if you need to hear this but do hear this: you are too good to be walking around with a pooey string hanging out of you. Would you let a friend do that? No. You’d be horrified and demand your friend take your last tampon just so they didn’t have to endure the ickyness. So be your own horrified friend. Tell yourself that you deserve a clean string – that you deserve more. And when you assert to yourself that, yeah, you are better than a pooey string, your spine starts to straighten. You carry yourself with more power and poise. Sure, you wonder just how low your self-esteem is that you have to assert to yourself that you don’t deserve to have faecal matter dangling from your nether regions, but progress is progress. This is about more than shit and string; this is about the respect you have your yourself. So get that new tampon girlfriend and as you work up into position, whisper to yourself “because you’re worth it”.

Self care is feeling a bit of sticky grit and/or grime between your toes just before getting into bed and, instead of sleeping with filthy feet, getting up and scrubbing those leg hands of yours with a scrubbing brush. Yes, it’s an effort to walk to the bathroom. And quickly holding your feet under a running tap is waaaay faster than getting in there for a good scrub. But you’re worth walking down the hall for. You’ re worth more than a lazy splash under a lukewarm tap. Put in the effort for yourself, my dirty-footed darling. You deserve to go to bed feeing like some kind of luxe goddess, like you’re the daughter of Egyptian nobility who gets carried around on some kind of pillow platform by burly men and bathes in tubs of milk. But, let’s face it, you’re the daughter of Old Mate, you drive a dodgy former family vehicle with a lot of Ks on the clock and you would be devastated to waste that much milk (and, let’s be honest, in the southeast Queensland climate it would start to smell pretty quickly) so scrubbing your feet with soap is the closest you’re going to get to that feeling. Treat yourself.