knowing radical self-care :: remove the haste and hurry

Editor's Note: during the month of June, members of my Story Sessions community will be posting about what it means to pursue dreams, engage in self-care and practice active boundaries. They had free reign on what they wrote, and the topics come from my 30 Days of Prompts. I'm so excited about the wisdom these ladies will share with you, and I know you'll be inspired.

xoxo,

Elora Nicole 

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When I was in the fifth grade, I distinctly remember our teacher standing in front of the class, teaching us how to speed-read.  This new technique was supposed to help our reading be fluid and continuous, more efficient.  To be faster.  

“Before you have finished reading the first word, start looking at the next,” she instructed us, drawing arrows over printed letters on a dusty green board.   

At 10 years old, school came easily to me.

I excelled. Reading was the world I lived in, so a technique that allowed me to consume more books in a shorter period of time, should have excited me.  Instead, it was frustrating.  I loved words, in a way that was somewhat peculiar for a child.  I adored the word globe, how it started at the back of my front teeth, the circular arch of my tongue, mimicking the object itself, before pushing the last syllable through my lips. I struggled with this assigned task.  I wasn’t finished absorbing the first word before I moved on to the second, the third, the fourth.  I’d get to the end of the page and wonder what I had read, never really experiencing it.  But I was a quick learner. It wasn’t long before I was rushing through novels to add them to my “reading log” in hopes of besting my classmates as the most prolific reader.  

Years later, I’m still trying to unlearn that lesson.  To recapture that adoration for vocabulary. To slow myself down, to step into each word and wade into its center, experience its weight.  How the depth of the word audacious feels like curling my toes over the ledge of a cliff.  

The crispness of cucumber. 
The contortions of kinesiology.  

Slowing down is improving my writing.  Reducing the rush in my life is also improving my living.  

Sometimes, self care is as simple as removing the haste and the hurry.

Most days I’m like Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit and “the hurrier I go the behinder I get”.   I rush through my words and days, I scribble them down in a journal, put an X through them on the calendar, without remembering to take the time to engage and process.  To finger their rough edges, the places where they hitch and tear through the story.  The jagged scars they have left in my own life and the searing pain they may cause to others.  I make footnotes for joyful news to be celebrated later, forgetting that now is the time for jubilant dancing, the clanging of pot and pans, and shouting in the streets. 

This act of self care, this permission slip to ourselves to take our sweet time, gives us the opportunity to engage in pain we’d rather ignore, and in the excitement we too easily overlook.  It allows old experiences, and new visions to come to the surface. 

That idea burning in your belly? 
The longing that aches in your bones? 

Slow down.  Feel the itch of it under your skin.  Let it sit for a minute.  Figure out what it will look like. 

Take the time to dream and conceive, to plan and to prepare.  This too, is self care.

I have taken courses dedicated to managing self care in a professional practice.  I have written multiple papers on self care techniques.  If I had to boil it all down to one practice, one application for day-to-day living, it would be to slow down.  Don’t rush through the hard things, feel them, sit with them.  By numbing the pain you’ll only end up diluting the joy of other moments.  And my dear, remember, there is no shame in the jubilation. 

This isn’t new advice.  People much smarter than me have said this before and people will say it again. Slow down. I haven’t unearthed the secret to radical self care. No one will run screaming down the street holding a copy of this post claiming that they now possess the key to good self care practice.   But it does work.  It is not the be all and end all. It is not going to fix your personal or professional life. When the realities of this world capture the breath from your lungs, when you’re working with the cool clay of a sister’s story, and the trauma of her narrative begins to intersect with your own, simply slowing down will not be enough.  Other self care is needed (and sometime the most radical self care is recognizing that you can’t do all that care yourself).  But slowing down will take you in the right direction.  It is the slower pace that allows you to recognize when life is chafing against your skin.  It is the reduced speed that lets you identify the need for further self care. 

These days I am endeavouring to follow my own advice. I am learning to ask for more time, when I need it.  To intentionally leave blocks of blank space on my schedule.  My time is precious.  It is a finite resource with which I am struggling to be purposeful.  I am attempting to disregard my tendency to overcompensate by ensuring every moment is chock-full.  To ease my pace, to taste and enjoy the fullness of what I am doing in these moments.   Slowing down is making me a better writer, a better daughter, sister, and friend.   So today, I am going to wait to hit publish on that post I have been writing.  I am going to make tea and call my dad.  I am going to see about getting a canoe out onto a quiet lake that I’ve yet to explore.  Everything else can wait.

// 

Leigha is a recovering Sunday School Scholar, who is learning to embrace questions without answers. An MSW candidate and lover of words, she believes in the power of narratives, both the personal and the collective. Leigha writes her words and lives her life on the East Coast of Canada. She blogs at www.leighacann.com and is on twitter @leighacann.