Self Care 2017

Self care is the trending buzzword of 2017. Almost overnight, we have been given ‘permission’ to get the massage, take the day off, take up fencing, buy the dress…Yet, I’m not sure many more of us have an understanding of what self care means, any more than we knew how to pronounce quinoa in 2012.

At the deepest level, I believe self care means being true to your soul’s purpose and journey. That voice in the back of your head that tells you not to sleep with that guy or that you really should call off the interview that means more money for a soul crushing job…yeah, that little voice. The voice that you wish didn’t sound quite so much like your Aunt Sally. Sure, she had you best interest at heart, but she was a real downer right? Self care, at the deepest level, means actually being true to your real self. It means making commitments to YOU and keeping them no matter what. It means taking care of your heart and hoping your head and body will follow along.

Self care is not the sexy ‘let’s go to Punta Cana for the weekend’ permission slip we have been taught it is. It is actually the really boring friend named Gwen who says, “the party at Robin’s house will be filled with pitfalls for the commitments you have made for 2017. You promised you wouldn’t drink too much and everyone will be doing fireball shots. You promised you were going to reevaluate meaningless sexual hookups and well, fireball shots. You promised you were going to get up and do your pilates tape before work everyday…and, well, fireball shots.” Yes, self care is that friend that didn’t get invited to your parties because she was the one who whispered in your ear and said ‘you’re going to regret this, you are not going to keep your promises to yourself…you REALLY are going to have a hard time looking in the mirror tomorrow morning.’

Self care is a two-fold practice. The first part entails making the hard commitments to yourself that you want to keep, and the second part is the face looking back at you in the mirror when you have kept those commitments. Self care is honoring YOU. Not spoiling yourself, but really honoring why you are here and what you need to do in order to learn and get to the next part of your journey.

For this year, I am making the commitment to myself, and to you, to ‘add in health.’ That, for me, means that I will evaluate my actions based on whether they will bring a positive benefit to myself and others. For example, I will add in the commitment of working on my blog almost daily. I will begin to teach an online cooking class on January 18^th and each week will be divided into cooking techniques and then videos and recipes that use those techniques. Some techniques might take many weeks to master and may be structured into different levels of skill sets over the year; a beginner class in January, an intermediary class in the Spring and an advanced class in the Summer, you get the idea. Each Sunday, I will post a class schedule of live demos for the week. I will give you recipes for the dishes we are going to make as well as a shopping list if you plan to cook the dishes. In return I would like your feedback of what is helpful and for you to sign up for the email blog subscription. When we have 15k followers I will give all you vegans out there, my vegan cheese sauce recipe as a little bonus.

But the commitment that I make to you and me, is that I will cook my little heart out this whole entire year. If you chose to follow my progress, I will make sure that by the end of the year you are right alongside me in the journey to reclaim #foodislove. We will approach food as our first medicine and rebuild our relationship with how we eat one loving meal at a time. In lives that are lived mostly on autopilot, we will look at foods we eat as a mindful practice. We will begin to take self care of our body by eating foods as close to the source as possible. We will examine which foods we eat when we are angry, lonely, sad and in need of comfort. We will take seriously the foods that make us feel better and we will reinvent and rethink our comfort foods, our aphrodisiacs, our food drugs.

You see, I really believe that we can eat our selves healthy. I really believe that #foodislove.   

Come along for the journey.