Surrendering to Self-Care, Not Pushing Productivity

Soft hearts aren’t often credited with strength, but the people with the softest hearts are some of the toughest people I’ve known.

Being loving and caring deeply about others (or animals or the planet) has nothing to do with weakness or frailty and everything to do with being fierce, strong, and powerful. It’s just a softer power than what we’ve been taught to admire.

We give over our admiration to the stroke of the ax rather than the gentle flow of water, but while the work of the ax might be quick, clean, and instant, it is no more powerful than the water with its gradual wearing away of the elements to change them.

Soft can be powerful, too. Gentle can be strong. We just look at it the wrong way.

Soft hearts require consistent self-care.

When we are easily affected by the world, we need to balance those vulnerable places by taking good care of ourselves. It’s not just something we should do; it’s something we must do to be healthy and not to get caught up in the hurting places.

I had a day recently where I was feeling the vulnerable places inside myself rising to the surface. Everything was hurting me. I had been eliminating toxic relationships in my life and building new, healthier boundaries. I had been exploring feelings, both new and old, and coming to terms with ideas that didn’t sit comfortably with me.

It was a hard day — a day when all I wanted to do was pull the cover over my heads and wait until the hurting passed. Of course, that’s not how life often works. I had work to do, children to care for, and dinner to make.

I couldn’t just lie down and wait for the world to right itself. I had to keep moving.

Or did I?

I gave myself pockets of time in the day to surrender to the softness. I had moments where I curled up on the couch in my favorite pajamas with the softest blanket and allowed myself to just watch part of a movie with my children before getting up to prepare dinner. I gave myself healthy food, eaten slowly, and I made sure to create space for cuddles with my kids.

I didn’t have to rush through the day, even though there were things to be done. I could be soft with myself. I could be gentle with my own experience of pain.

After my children went to bed, I watched something I enjoyed on television. I took a long, hot bath. I tucked myself into bed at an incredibly early hour because the one thing my body craved most was extra rest. I did what I needed, ever so gently, because I needed it.

That’s what self-care looks like sometimes.

It’s healthy foods and a long bath and an early bedtime. It’s giving ourselves permission to leave dishes in the sink and load the dishwasher in the morning. It’s understanding that everything that needs to be done doesn’t have to be completed right this minute or even the next one.

When we’re physically ill, we often nourish ourselves with soup, clear liquids, and plenty of rest. When our hearts are hurting, we behave as if everything is fine when it’s not. We should be having comfort food, plenty of water, and however much rest we need rather than acting like a mental or emotional experience is somehow less valuable than a physical one.

We need to figure out how to love ourselves enough to be gentle with our care when we need it.

We may not need that emotionally-fraught television show right now or the suspenseful book that triggers our fears and failings. We need, instead, to identify what our souls require and meet those needs.

Switch out the emotionally charged show for one that makes us feel good, and then switch the suspenseful book to a tale that uplifts and moves us. Our bedtime might need to be moved earlier, and maybe we spend extra time just being with our family rather than insisting that everything gets done the way it does when we’re feeling our best.

Self-care is for all of us, but it’s most especially for those of us with a soft heart, too easily bruised by the world. We need to remember that no one will take care of us in the same way we can.

We should love ourselves enough to make sure that we are gentle when gentle is what our souls crave.

It’s not the time to push our growth but to surrender to this space of vulnerability.

To experience it. To heal. To rest. To understand that softness contains power and strength that isn’t often recognized and yet is so incredibly important. To lean into that space and allow ourselves just to be.

Our work, in these moments, is not to keep working, to keep pushing and striving and doing. Our work becomes just to be.

We need to find a way to exist in those soft places and to be present with ourselves at our most vulnerable. This is what true strength looks like, after all: allowing for our own humanity. Accepting it, forgiving it, loving it.

We are whole, even on the days where we feel raw and broken. We just have to be gentle enough with ourselves to allow the experience to come and then to pass again, the way it does when we stop resisting and start leaning in.