Self Care When Skies are Blue
“It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.”
I know we’re all getting a bit tired of the “Q-word”, but even as restrictions are slowly lifting, many of us are still sheltering in place and in a limbo state. Throughout all of this, we have been asked to spend extended time in the environments we have created for ourselves. For some, their homes have provided steady comfort and solace in the face of so much upheaval. For others, the experience has heightened their un-ease, as they’re not able to feel any sense of soothing from the place that surrounds them. For me personally, I have felt intense gratitude that all the physical and energetic work I have put into the space I call home has come back to take such good care of me now.
This brings to mind the Aesop’s fable I learned as a child about the ant and the grasshopper. While it wasn’t much fun, the little ant toiled during the beautiful summer months to build up stockpiles of food to get through the coming winter. The grasshopper, preferring to dance his days away, ignored the need to prepare because winter seemed so very far away. And, let’s just say, it didn’t end well for him when winter did arrive. While it’s not always easy, fun or of particular interest to tend to the seemingly mundane things when life is humming along and the skies are blue, we see the importance of doing so when the inevitable dark clouds come.
Neglecting ones surroundings or ones physical, emotional or spiritual needs when we have the time to focus on doing the work is, in a way, disrespecting ones self. Self-care, or tending to these needs routinely is not a selfish pursuit, but rather, a means to self-preparedness. That preparedness is what helps to ease the stress when challenges come in our lives - and they always do. What we have invested into preparing can determine our outcomes, and make it much easier to pick ourselves back up when the skies clear. As an interior designer, I focus on the energy of the home, because I see what a great sense of grounding it can provide in our lives. While talking about the aesthetics of a home may seem vapid, it’s purpose is much deeper than what is seen on the surface. The home can be our shelter from the storm if we are continually preparing it to be so. And adding beauty to it is the equivalent of having a full pantry or a generator at the ready.
When we provide ourselves with (what we perceive as) beauty in our personal surroundings it makes us feel good because it awakens a remembering of our connection to it on a soul level. It is that connection which inspires us to seek it in other aspects of our lives. That search reveals that beauty is a mindset, and once we’re in it, we can see its abundance everywhere we look, whether in the natural world, or in the people we share this earth with. We can even see beauty in the midst of what is perceived as chaos.
I’ve said before that this quarantine is a gift if we choose to see it from the mindset of beauty and self-care and how it radiates out into something much bigger. It has given us the gift of time to review, reflect, repair or remove that which no longer works in our lives - and that is what self-care is all about. It is the work of self-care that opens the pathway to seeing the obvious and hidden beauty all around us. It is that beauty which allows us to see things from a higher vibrational perspective and gives us a steady sense of knowing that there is a purpose to all things. And it is that knowing which gives us a sense of peace and well-being in trying times.
And, while we may not see in this very moment the ways the universe is conspiring to help us to self-correct, we may one day have understanding, and even gratitude, for the chance we have been given to take better care of ourselves and prepare for what comes next.
