Well, there’s no way I can say it without cringing: I missed my own deadline. This newsletter is a week late and typing that sentence makes me die a little inside.

Last week, I ran out of the time and energy I needed to write Heavy Machinery. I had too much on my plate so when Sunday rolled around and I still had nothing, I made a decision that’s tough for me. I allowed myself to take a break that week, instead of attempting to write in a mental and physical state that would have had me agonising for hours and coming up with something I’d never be happy with.

Honestly, I’m never OK with pushing back my deadlines. I’ve had a bad case of chronic perfectionism my whole life. A couple of years ago, I never would have been able to make this decision and say, “Hey, today’s not the one. Let’s push this newsletter back a week because that’s better than suffering and crying through seven hours of work just to meet a self-imposed deadline.”

Today, I can (sometimes) make a conscious choice to look after myself. But when we choose to practise self-care, it’s not just about performing a behaviour. We need to feel it, too.

I fundamentally believe in the importance of self-care. I believe it’s vital to acknowledge and appreciate our worth as individuals, and to take care of ourselves in ways that matter to us. Our health needs to be a priority, whether that’s physical or mental or emotional or spiritual. It all matters because we matter.

Nonetheless, my relationship to self-care is complicated. For lots of reasons, I don’t value my own health. Like many women of colour, it’s always an effort to put myself first and that choice comes with a lot of baggage. I normally feel shame and guilt and discomfort when I practise self-care. I expect myself to operate at MAX at all times. I expect myself to never need a break or a reminder that I’m worth something just on my own, just to myself.

Letting go of perfection is an ongoing process and it’s one that’s necessary to really understand what self-care means. There’s a popular image of self-care as bubble baths and chocolate desserts and reading in a corner with a cat on your lap, and whilst self-care can be all of these things, it is also taking medication and showering and remembering to eat.

Above all, self-care is about compassion. It’s about not beating ourselves up when we forget that pill or when we eat trash because cooking is too difficult right now. It’s about forgiving ourselves when facing the outside world seems impossible and it’s about being kind to ourselves when all we can manage in a day is crying a lot and numbly watching The Get Down.

Self-care means understanding that we might always find self-care hard, and that’s OK. In all likelihood, I’m probably never going to feel great about shifting a deadline. That action might always feel like a failure to me. What I’m learning to do, though, is not see myself as bad or incompetent or any number of other words that spring to mind when I have to shift a deadline or miss a goal or feel like I’m struggling too much.

I’m learning to breathe in and to breathe out. I’m learning to let go, and I’m learning to trust that there is enough time for everything. Maybe one day, I will learn that it doesn’t even matter if there’s enough time, because I’m enough. We’re enough.

Self-care isn’t about what we do, it’s about what we believe and what we feel. Self-care can be all the nice things we do for ourselves and it can be all the practical things, too. But ultimately, it’s a way of existing in the world and a way to think and feel through each day. It’s about acceptance and forgiveness and hope. It’s about allowing ourselves to stumble because we know that we’re always going to stumble. It’s about giving ourselves the space to fall and knowing we can land softly.

Heavy Machinery is written by Zainabb Hull and powered by intentional rest.
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