Welcome to this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives? Every month a group of seven bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on specific prompts. It’s been so interesting over the years to see the different ways each of us interpret the topics.

July’s prompt is “How I Do Self-Care at Home.” I’m probably on the very VERY low end of the spectrum when it comes to self-care. I’m not a “product” person. I don’t meditate or stretch or do yoga. I don’t consistently eat particularly well. I have no particular health and/or beauty routines. I don’t brush my hair a hundred strokes before bed or roll an icy roller over my puffy face in the morning.

Wikipedia defines “self-care” as “…the process of establishing behaviors to ensure holistic well-being of oneself, to promote health, and actively manage illness when it occurs. Individuals engage in some form of self-care daily with food choices, exercise, sleep, and hygiene.”

Perhaps the three areas in which I do practice some degree of self-care, are: 1) reward 2) escape 3) naps. Ha.

I am big on rewarding myself for small and large accomplishments. You survived that test? You get ice cream. You adulted? You don’t have to speak to humans for the next 24 hours. You got yourself to Korea? You get to stay two nights in a fancy hotel. Etc. I learned long ago that no one else is necassarily going to NOTICE my (what I consider) accomplishments, let alone reward them. So at some point I just decided that was my responsibility and I’m pretty okay with that. I realize that “reward” might be slightly outside the recognized scope of self-care…but not for me 🙂

Escape can take many forms: not leaving my room, cancelling plans with a human, skipping class, sleep. Just like the dog who has his crate in the corner where he knows he can go to escape noisy family life…I take comfort in knowing that I, too, can escape life when needed. When “out there” and “they” just get to be too much…and my anxiety and stress levels are SUPER HIGH, I don’t always have to push through. Sometimes I can hide out at home or with a book or a nap. Sometimes you just need a little break.

And lastly, naps. Ahhh, the glory of a nap. I think naps fall into both of the above categories: reward and escape. Few things feel as luxurious as a nap. The ability to just lay down and close your eyes when the rest of the world is being productive and fulfilling obligations, woohoo, that is heady stuff.

Reward, escape, and naps may not typically fall under the umbrella of self-care, but…I firmly believe that these things make the difference between Bettye Who Can Get Through One More Day…and Bettye Who Curls Up in a Ball The End. And isn’t that what self-care is?? Taking care of yourself so you can continue doing this life thing?

Please make a visit to my friends’ blogs as well, to see how they do self-care.

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own