how to care for yourself in meaningful ways

I call it 'basic human care'

I had every intention of sending a letter last Sunday (as I do every week) but I spent the previous days packing and preparing to fly to Melbourne to record the audiobook for A Brain That Breathes, while also navigating hay fever and inflamed sinus. I was in transit when I decided to let it go and just sit in the waiting between flights and hotels. It was quiet; I softened - it was just what I needed.

I wouldn’t have done this a few year’s ago and I sat with this realisation for a while, and considered how much I’ve learnt about who I am and what I need. Now I know how to care for myself in meaningful ways and I rarely let obligation or expectation get in the way of that. This means that sometimes things don’t work out as planned - and that’s okay. This is normal life, which is always a bit topsy-turvy. We are lying if we pretend that it’s not.

It’s now Sunday morning and there’s blackened bananas that need to be made into banana bread and half a dozen bruised pears from the box of almost-compost fruit + veg that I picked up at the grocers yesterday (I’ll make muffins with some and stew the rest). I’ve just sat on the back step, my border collie nestled as close to me as she could get, while I drank my morning coffee in the sun and read the first three chapters of Jane Harper’s The Dry (one of those novels I’ve had on the TBR pile for far too long).

It’s true that when life gets busy (which is inevitable for most of us in the coming weeks especially) we drop what’s most meaningful. When time is scarce we are more easily distracted and we skip past what is most likely to support us: exercise, sleep, nourishing food, considered conversation. These busy times are tipping edges because we move faster and work harder and reach for what will boost us in the short term: sugar, caffeine, ‘pushing through’.

I wonder: why do we need constant reminding to return to the very basics of human care? And then I remember that we live in a world dictated by late stage capitalism; we’ve been conditioned to look ahead for answers and to reach for products to soothe our ails — to keep going despite our exhaustion (no excuses!).

But basic human care is tending to the deepest, truest parts of ourselves. And it’s learning to live simply and sustainably when the whole world is fast, expectant, and often, completely dismissive of our humanness; the fact that we are nature.

“I’m learning to recognise the heady spiral of too much work and too little space. When I’m grasping for answers and letting everything else go, I know I need to step back.” - from A Brain That Breathes

What does this stepping back look like at this time of year when there’s less space and more obligation?