Your health is not something you can replace. Choosing yourself is self care…and self respect.
Paying attention to your body’s reality rather than to the pressure of what you think you “should” be doing or what other’s thoughts about it are…is self care…and self respect. When you do not lead by example in this way, the more you push through, the more you are expected to push through…and your body continues to become depleted.
In “helping” professions, we are conditioned to push through, show up, sacrifice, and prove our dedication. Yet “I must value my own health” is “self help” for recovering from any illness, most especially an acute illness that takes you down suddenly and requires patience, care, time and medical treatment to heal.
There is something profoundly different about the choice I have recently made about self care, self respect and self preservation…
A “Me First” mindset…not in a selfish way, but in a selfless way…
The realization that ‘I am worthy of care’ is a profound rite of passage.
When one has spent a lifetime caring for others and is finally giving herself permission to extend that same compassion and grace to herself…it reveals the quiet courage of self preservation…and that she, too, is worthy of care.
Love and blessings,
Wendy
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