I meet so many women in my clinic who apologise for being there. “I know I shouldn’t really,” they say, settling onto the treatment bed for the first hour that has belonged to them in months. “There’s so much I should be doing.” If that sounds like you — forever at the bottom of your own to-do list — this is your gentle reminder that looking after yourself was never selfish.
The maths of the empty cup
You’ve heard it before because it’s true: you cannot pour from an empty cup. The people you care for — children, parents, partners, colleagues — are not better served by an exhausted version of you. They’re served best by a you who has been allowed to rest, breathe and be held up occasionally too. Care that only ever flows outwards eventually runs dry.
Rest is maintenance, not reward
Somewhere along the way many of us learned that rest must be earned — that it’s the prize at the end of the finished list. But the list is never finished, is it? Rest isn’t a reward for a body that has done enough; it’s maintenance for a body you need every single day. You service the car before it breaks down. You deserve at least the same courtesy.
What twenty years has taught me
In over two decades of holistic care — including work in palliative care, life’s most tender season — I’ve learned this: nobody ever wished they had rested less. The women who thrive through busy, demanding years are rarely the ones who pushed hardest without pause. They’re the ones who learned, sooner or later, to let themselves be cared for too.
Start smaller than you think
Self-care doesn’t have to mean grand gestures. It can be ten unhurried minutes with a cup of tea that stays hot. A walk without your phone. An early night without guilt. And sometimes, it’s an hour on a warm treatment bed where the only thing required of you is to receive.
Whatever it looks like for you this week — take it. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you’re human. And if that hour happens to be in my clinic, I’ll have the blanket warmed.