Ep. 23: Why It's So Hard to Stick with Self-Care Rituals
This week’s episode is all about self-care rituals and some of the lesser-discussed reasons for why it’s so hard to stick with them. I also share my self-care ritual with you—Self-Care Sundays and Monthly Resets.
Things mentioned in the episode:
- Dra. Rosales Meza: Resources on decolonization and reclaiming our cultural practices and ancestral wisdom
- My favorite book: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- The Notes to Self Collection: Products to support your authentic wellness journey
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Email: kashara@kasharajohnson.com
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TikTok: @kasharajohnson
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Episode Transcript
Hey there! It’s Kashara, and you are listening to the Undiscovered Worth podcast. I hope you’re doing really well since the last episode. We are already into February. Here in Atlanta, the weather’s been toggling between dreary, rainy, and suspiciously warm early Spring vibes. In my most recent Five-Minute Letter, I shared that I feel like the last month or so, I’ve been in a bit of hibernation mode—mostly staying indoors, snuggling up on the couch, reading, writing, and working on some experimental creative projects. My weekends look so different from those of my early to mid-twenties, and I’m okay with that because I’m spending time doing the things that bring me joy. I hope that all of us take more time out for ourselves and fill that time with the things that are meaningful and enjoyable without the need to attach any result, purpose, or expectations to it.
This week’s episode is about self-care rituals, some of the reasons that I don’t think we talk about enough for why it’s so hard for many of us to create and stick with them. And then, I wanted to share my self-care ritual with you.
Before we get into it, I wanted to kick this episode with a segment that I call the Joy Forecast.
The Joy Forecast
Okay, so this segment is actually something that I do in my personal life. The backstory is that in 2019, my husband and I separated. As anyone who’s been through anything similar, it’s a very stressful time. I was not in a good place. I felt like I was blowing my entire life up. I’d just signed the lease on a new apartment that I was moving into. I’d also found a therapist that I was going to start seeing regularly.
But before I did that, I booked a weekend trip to Philly to visit my friend Gina. We decided to go out one night, and at some point, we ended up sitting on this pier or dock. We’re sitting in silence for a bit. I’m watching the ripples in the water reflecting light from the moon, and I start bawwwwwling, like really bawling. And I remember Gina, just let me cry it out, which I’m so thankful for because many people would’ve tried dishing out toxic positivity. I know I’ve been that friend before and mostly thought that it would help move the person forward, but what I’ve found to be more true than not is that it just provides an avenue for avoiding the work of sifting through feelings and processing reality. I could spend a whole episode talking about that, but I digress.
After I finished crying, she asked me, “What are you looking forward to in the near future?” At first, I was really caught off guard by that because usually, I feel like people extend words of encouragement—and I know that she did at some point, but to ask me that question took me out of my current situation and challenged me to anticipate my life beyond what felt like a really low point. And so I answered her. I told her that I was excited about starting therapy. I was excited about the new furniture I bought for my new apartment. And I was excited about having a new dog.
While it didn’t solve my most pressing issue at the moment, it did give me something to grasp when I felt like I was just floundering.
So now, when I’m feeling down or uninspired, or unlike myself, I use that question to give myself some perspective and a bit of hope—hope in knowing that life is just made up of a series of seasons and that by still being here to tell you this story that means that I’ve survived every obstacle that I’ve ever faced.
So, with that being said—my near future anticipations are—
Buying more frames for our artwork and purchasing a stand for my record player.
I feel like one challenge with living in apartments is this tendency to plan the future and not invest in a ton of home decor. That’s been the case for me. I have tons of plants and books displayed on my bookshelves, but the idea of putting a bunch of art on our walls has always felt a bit too permanent to me. So, I’m excited about doing that this year. So far, the art that we put up has made the place feel incredibly homey.
Bookclub with my mom
My mom and I have decided to create a book club. One of my favorite books is The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. I recommended it to my mom, and we decided it would be a cool bonding experience to read it together and discuss it. I share a link to it from my local feminist bookstore in the show notes for anyone interested in checking it out. When I originally read the book, I checked it out from my local library. I’ve meant to buy a personal copy, so this was the perfect opportunity.
Birthday Trip
The last thing that I’m looking forward to in the near future is my birthday trip coming up next month. We’ve got a really fun trip planned that I think will be much needed by the time we get there. We’ve been trying to make an effort to travel more, especially since things opened back up. I’ll probably share a photo dump once we get back from it.
Why It’s So Hard to Create and Stick to Self-Care Rituals
One of the reasons I think it’s so hard to create and stick with a self-care ritual is because mainstream media doesn’t emphasize the interconnectedness of self-care enough.
Self-care encompasses the mind, the body, and the spirit. If our minds are not well, it will be very difficult for us to feel like moving our bodies, and it’s also going to impede our ability to connect spiritually with ourselves and the Universe, Spirit, God, insert whatever you believe in. If our bodies are not well, it can lead to depression or anxiety and also makes it challenging to have a sense of faith or hope. And if our spirits are not well, and we don’t feel connected to something greater than ourselves, and to creation as a whole, this can impact our sense of purpose and belonging and our desire to engage with our physical world.
It’s all interconnected, and I don’t think that’s emphasized enough. It’s not enough to just meditate or to just exercise. We have to consider and be mindful of how these practices are interplaying with each other and elevating our quality of life.
And that brings me to my second point. Speaking for myself, I tried to create a self-care practice many times, and it didn’t stick; more times than not, I was adopting a practice without considering if it was even right for me. In an ideal world, I’m sure it’d be great to meditate for 30 minutes every morning. Still, the reality is that my mornings look different each day, and quite frankly, meditating doesn’t enhance my connection to my body or spirit like other practices I’ve incorporated into my life.
The message that we receive from our society is that wellness is supposed to look the same for everyone, but that’s just not the case. Wellness is supposed to be authentic to each of us. What helps keep me well may not be the same thing that helps keep you well, and that’s okay—in fact, I think that’s how it should be. Your unique experiences, genetics, and cultural and ancestral background make you who you are. So, it only makes sense that your self-care practices would be uniquely specific to you.
So next time you consider incorporating a new practice, take a second to ask yourself, “Is this right for me? How will this enhance my quality of life? Who does this ultimately benefit by me taking this on?”
So many tips, tricks, and products that the wellness industry pushes is for profit or influence. While some of these can be beneficial, keeping in mind how intertwined capitalism and the wellness industry are, it’s super important that we stop and ask critical questions first beforehand.
The third reason why I believe so many of us struggle with creating and keeping self-care practices is because of generational trauma. Colonialism and white supremacy have touched just about every square inch of our world. There’s a reason why they say that the sun never set on the British empire.
A hard truth that we are still reckoning with to this day is how we were forcefully disconnected from our cultural practices and ancestral wisdom. Dra. Rosales Meza discusses decolonization and reclaiming our cultural practices and ancestral wisdom. If you’d like to dive into it, I will link her in the show notes for you.
For those of us who are part of the global majority, like myself, we know all too well how our cultural and ancestral practices historically have been demonized or exoticized (I’m honestly not even sure if that’s a word, but we’re gonna rock with it), only to later be co-opted, scrubbed of any cultural meaning or depth, and packaged into products for profit. This has been happening for centuries. It feels like a tale as old as time. Let’s also be mindful that we’re not engaging with practices that were ours to begin with. I’ve written about this in a Five-Minute Letter, and I’ll say it here: I believe this is a reclamation time. I have never seen, heard, or witnessed so many people unapologetically returning to and celebrating their cultural practices. I really haven’t. I’ve seen everything from people reintroducing themselves with their given name to women reclaiming their body hair after learning the racist history of why body hair on women is so looked down upon in the first place. Life as we know it is not sustainable or natural. Constant growth is not natural, especially constant growth at the expense of everything. As much turmoil as we are witnessing globally, so much beauty is unfolding, and I think that the turmoil is just a final gasp of the colonial system.
The world that we currently live in was built from the imagination and then followed up with decisive action. Building the world that we want to live in and want future generations to live in it will also require imagination and decisive action. And I believe that it’s possible.
In discussing the historical context for this topic, I think we’d also have to talk about the multi-generational position of servitude that many of our ancestors were forced into. Speaking as a Black woman in the South, I frequently think about those who came before me who were brought here and couldn’t prioritize themselves or their well-being. And I also think about how so often today, Black women are still expected to accept this idea that our entire identity is to be in service of others. We’re expected to be others’ caretakers, rescuers (you see this in politics every four years), advocates, and just so many things.
We have been conditioned to think of and care for ourselves last.
When we’re spending so much of our lives being everything for everyone else, we often forget ourselves. We forget that if we weren’t anything to anyone else, we would still have ourselves, and that deserves to be emphasized and permanently fixed in the forefront of our minds. We belong to ourselves before we belong to anyone else. And because we belong to ourselves, we should prioritize our wellness first.
My husband and I are in this season of saving up our money, and he always says that we should pay ourselves first. And I think this is so smart and something I didn’t do before we got married. I, and probably lots of people, would say, “Okay, I’m going to pay all of my bills and do this and that, and then at the end of the month, I’ll put what’s left in savings.” And you know what wasn’t there at the end of every month? Money. Because there will always be something that comes up, something unexpected that requires paying for. So that’s why we pay ourselves first.
And that translates really well to self-care. If we don’t take time from the get-go, whether that be first thing in the morning or at the beginning of the week or month, it will become increasingly likely that something or someone will need our time, and we’ll discover that we never get a chance to carve out any of that time for ourselves.
So those are the three lesser talked about reasons why we struggle to create and keep self-care rituals.
We don’t consider the interconnectedness of self-care and the mind, body, and spirit.
We adopt self-care practices without considering if they’re actually right for us as individuals.
The generational trauma of colonialism and this continued expectation that people of the global majority are to only be in service of others leads us to prioritize ourselves last.
My Self-Care Ritual
Self-Care Sundays
By the time you hear this, it will be Monday, but I’m currently recording this on Sunday evening, so I wanted to share with you my self-care ritual that I did earlier today.
I call the first Sunday of every month my Self-Care Sunday. It’s a day when I spend quality time with myself—sometimes, it’s the whole day. On other days, like today, it’s just a few hours, but the main point is to take a bit and show myself love. For this month’s Self-Care Sunday, I scheduled a massage appointment. It was nice because I pulled a muscle in my right shoulder last week while exercising, and it’s been pretty uncomfortable. I also went to my local feminist bookstore here in Atlanta and bought The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, which I mentioned earlier in the episode. Then, I wrapped everything up by having lunch at a new-to-me Vietnamese restaurant while I read a book and enjoyed some slow, quiet time. I also wanted to see Origins, Ava DuVernay’s new film, in theaters, but the whole day was kind of grey and gloomy, and it was starting to rain, so I decided to come back home and record this episode. All in all, it was a relaxing day. It felt like a good reset.
Monthly Resets
And speaking of resets, I also do this exercise called Monthly Resets as part of my Self-Care Sunday. I will be honest and tell you I have not always stuck with it. There are times when I go 2-3 months without doing it.
I started back in late 2022 because I felt like I kept spinning with the same struggles every month and wasn’t really doing anything about any of it. I would say I wanted to exercise more, read more, and spend more time with friends. Still, none of that was happening, and by the next month, I was back to either bitching about how I wasn’t happy with certain aspects of my life, OR I’d turn the frustration onto myself and basically berate myself for not living up to my expectations—neither of which was at all helpful, hence, the Monthly Reset.
So, the Monthly Reset is broken down into four parts:
What went well last month
What didn’t go as well last month
What to do differently this month
Monthly Intention
So, I want to preface this by saying that when I make my list, it is SOLEY about improving my quality of life—the intangibles—like my joy, my sense of connection to myself, my loved ones, and my community. It’s about increasing my level of creativity, not my productivity. It’s about showing my body love, not just seeing numbers on a scale go down or fitting any aesthetics. I started this because I needed something that wasn’t highly complicated, took less than 30 minutes, and wasn’t stressful or pressure-fueled.
I picked Sundays because Sunday has the least activities or responsibilities. And two, because “Self-Care Sunday” sounded a bit catchier than the other days of the week, haha.
Reminders
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in trying, I encourage you to do it, and also, feel free to tweak it to make it more of your own.
When you create or refine your self-care ritual, I suggest that you keep in mind two things. Make it something that feels true and relevant to you right now. Your ritual will shift and change as you do, which I think is good because it means you’re evolving. Trust that you’ll know when that shift needs to happen. Then, the other thing I suggest is that you make it sustainable. What would be the point of a self-care ritual if it’s not something you can keep up with and it’s stressing you out or causing you to turn on yourself with negative self-talk for falling below your unrealistic expectations? It defeats the purpose. So start small, start where you are, and then build from there.
And let me know how things go! I’m always interested in how others care for themselves and express self-love.
Conclusion
If you enjoyed this episode and want more content like it, subscribe to my Five-Minute Letters. They are personal letters that I share every 1st and 3rd Friday via email. They’re free; as the name would suggest, they can be read in under five minutes. Past letters (and other wonderful content) are on my website.
If you’re looking for products to support your authentic wellness journey, check out the Notes to Self collection that I designed. The collection includes an affirmation deck, bags, and cards to share good vibes with your friends and family.
All of this will be linked in the show notes.
I hope that you have a fabulous week. Take care of yourself. Bye!