Discuss: Is Self-Care Just Adulting?

Let’s talk about self-care — and how it often looks or feels like work or responsibility instead of relaxation. In fact, here’s the question for today: Is self-care just adulting?

Self-care is often branded as fun, relaxing things (get a massage! get your nails done! have a date night!) — and we did a post on self-care for working moms that included those kinds of activities (plus many other ideas!).

The older I get, though, the more I’m realizing that true self-care is the boring stuff that I don’t want to do because it’s the adulting stuff. Go to bed at a time that correlates with my goal to have 7–8 hours of sleep, because I’m not my best with less. Exercise in the morning because I’m more productive and focused the rest of the day. Put the wine glass down after the second refill because my sleep is cracked out if I have more. Eat at least one vegetable a day and one piece of fruit a day.

{related: how to stop revenge bedtime procrastination}

The whole thing kind of reminds me of this New Yorker cartoon, Alice in Responsibilityland…

It’s annoying, to be honest — I wish self-care were all massages and trashy books. But I will say that since I’ve started labeling some of these adulting tasks “self-care,” it’s made a shift in my thinking. I’ve always known I was doing these things for me and for my well-being… but rebranding them in my head as self-care makes me feel more like I’m gifting them to myself when I actually do them.

I think the different cycles of motherhood kind of threw me for a loop also with regard to self-care… when you’re in the weeds with an infant who’s up all night and attached to your breast, just having a minute to yourself to take a shower feels blissful… but it feels so blissful that it seems like you’re in wartime the rest of it. (At least, that’s how the infant years felt to me.)

Obviously, there are other emotional highs and the joys that come with parenting an infant — but something about self-care during those early years was hard enough that I feel like I’m just sort of realigning my thoughts on self-care for myself, now, as I head into new cycle of motherhood and am kind of reinventing myself as a mom.

Revamping my understanding of self-care as adulting also kind of takes away whatever mom guilt I had associated with it. It isn’t vain to want to exercise if I’m a kinder, more patient mom with my daily exercise. It isn’t antisocial to want to go to bed earlier if I function better with more sleep. Even with regards to trashy books (I’m a big fan of romance novels and HEAs), yes, sure I should be reading the five parenting books on my bedside table, but the trashy books make me happier and send me off to bed with fewer worries, and I sleep better. (And — not for nothing — I honestly doubt it has ever occurred to my husband to read a parenting book, so maybe that’s a unique “mom guilt” situation.)

Readers, what are your thoughts — do you think the definition of self-care has changed for you over the years, and particularly over the different phases of your mothering journey? What are your current self-care goals or tasks — the checklist items you strive to cross off because you know they improve your functioning, happiness, and more?

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / Rawpixels.