How do you practice self-care?
When I think of practicing self-care… I think of listening to music- but most importantly the sweet, smokey and sultry voices of Billi Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong etc. I appreciate modern artists of the day, don’t get me wrong; but nothing is more “self-careish” (I said it.) than drifting off to sleep to the hushed sounds of Lady Holiday, or Ella singing a mournful love song at Two AM.
I knew all that when I was a teenager. I somehow knew it at the age of sixteen when everything was perfect but secretly starting to waver. I never even heard the term “self-care” till I was in my early twenties, It was just innate to me to…relax? Oh, how I loved to take a hot bubble bath to Ella Fitzgerald’s love songs, dreaming that love was actually like that…Dreaming of simpler times.
But suddenly I was at twenty-three years old, and three days postpartum. The psychosis started when I was in the tub trying to clean up a little. Norah Jones played her soft Jazz and sang a mournful song about a carousel and I slipped into a nightmare…
I had my fortieth birthday last month, and I am just now learning how to practice self care again. I still don’t take baths in simple tubs due to PTSD, but my friend and I listened to the Carousel song together for the first time since I walked into my postpartum nightmare, just a month ago.
I fall asleep every night to Billi, Ella and Louis, etc.
Healing is possible.
Im so relaxed by the music that I fall asleep in some happy dream almost every time I put my station on the tv!
Except tonight.
Tonight it appears I have a bit of insomnia.
If you want to read more about my journey, I welcome you to my blog. It’s a crazy ride.
We will adapt. 