Finding Your Reason: Stories About the Importance of Self Care
This piece is a part of the Harry Potter Alliance’s series for our #SelfCareMagic, a week exploring what self care is and what it means to different people. To find out more about the Harry Potter Alliance, visit thehpalliance.org.
For some people, self care looks like going out with friends. For some, it’s baking or watching a movie alone. And others have no clue what their self care looks like. These are all valid, and they don’t even begin to cover a fraction of the myriad ways you can practice self care.
Everyone has their own story of how their eyes were opened to the importance of self care. I’ve collected a few of these stories from HPA volunteer staff and other friends that really highlight why self care is important and how self care truly is different for everyone.
Jessica:
Jessica realized the importance of adding self care into her life when she was in college and very overwhelmed with the idea of planning her future. College is such a transformative time in people’s lives, she thought it was an important time to explore how she practiced self care and how she could make it a priority among everything else in her life. For her, self care often includes time dedicated to stepping away from work and allowing herself to indulge in something that makes her happy; even in the most simple way. She tries to reflect on her self care routine often enough to recognize when it needs to change, what she needs to focus on, and how she can make sure it remains a priority.
Emily:
About two years ago, Emily realized that she’d never honestly taken care of herself. She had been active throughout her childhood, with dance and other activities, but she didn’t eat well or take the time to care for herself emotionally. She became incredibly depressed, eating either the bare minimum or eating a ton, and she didn’t even consider that her emotional state was a wreck.
When she joined roller derby, she learned that there is so much more that goes into taking care of yourself than she had ever known. It wasn’t just physical, but mental, emotional, and spiritual. So, Emily started taking control. She joined a sport that she knew nothing about. They practiced at nights, so getting a new sleep schedule was rough. She required a lot more food intake than she was used to. She had to learn to balance out her sugars and proteins, to maximize energy on rough days but still eat well on simple days.
While she was learning how to do this, she could tell when she wasn’t doing well because she would pass out on the track. Her body was in such poor shape that the physical exertion mixed with the weird sleep schedule became too much for her. After being consistent and careful, it got much better and she learned a lot about physical health.
The biggest hurdle was her mental and emotional state. She constantly felt like she wasn’t good enough — insignificant, ugly, and so many other horrible self deprecating thoughts. When she got married, her husband worked hard to make sure she always knew she was great. Then, when she started derby and actually felt that she was great, her self-esteem changed even more. Every time she picked herself back up, accomplished a goal, and challenged herself, she felt changed. The fact that she was outside the home, away from kids, gave her time to just be her.
Figuring out that taking time for herself wasn’t selfish, but needed, was a huge help. She stopped feeling guilty about having her husband put the kids to bed. She felt capable, strong, and determined. She showed her family and herself that you can be your own hero simply by taking time to heal your heart and mind.
Self care to Emily is so much more than these things, but it was a start for her, and she’s glad she took the time to figure self care out for herself.
Vanessa (TW: alcoholism, suicide attempt, sexual assault, drug abuse):
Vanessa never paid attention to self care. She was always the one who would never show her feelings or talk things out. She hid all of her emotions inside her because she didn’t want to seem weak.
Then her girlfriend of nine months broke up with her. Vanessa was told the fact that she never opened up or talked about their arguments drove her girlfriend up a wall. It made her fall out of love with Vanessa. Vanessa tried to convince her that she could change, but her girlfriend still left.
A couple of weeks later, she was back, wanting to try again. However they broke up again and never got back together. Her girlfriend suggested that Vanessa go to therapy to work some stuff out.
In the months that followed, Vanessa drank herself into a stupor. She hid it from everyone. Along with the drinking came the promiscuous sex that followed. Every day for the next six months was either sex or drinking. She was losing more money than she was making and getting behind on bills.
Reluctantly, she decided to go to therapy. She signed up for a session, just to see if it would work for her. The very first session was the first time she really cried about her issues. It was only a preliminary session, but one hour with the therapist made her feel incredibly better. Vanessa had found someone who wouldn’t judge her and would just listen to her words. They developed a real bond, and the therapist helped her unlock emotional chambers that she had closed off.
They talked about her depression, which had led to her suicide attempt, about her father’s death that had left her empty, about her past drug abuse and how she quit cold turkey after watching her first niece be born, and about how coming out to her friends was easy, but coming out to her mother destroyed their already shaky relationship. The therapist asked about her drinking, but at the time, Vanessa didn’t see it as a problem. Eventually, they even discussed the fact that Vanessa had been molested repeatedly by her neighbor’s son, and when she was old enough to understand what had happened to her, she constantly blamed herself.
Finally, Vanessa told her therapist that she wanted to stop drinking. A few weeks before, she had spent $200 on dollar drinks for herself and her friends, and had driven home drunk. She had blacked out about three miles before her house, and had no memory of how she’d gotten home. She was ashamed and absolutely terrified that she might drink herself to death. She was also worried that she wouldn’t be able to fight her depression if she was constantly drinking everyday.
Her therapist suggested AA, but Vanessa didn’t want any religious connection to her recovery, so she decided to do it with therapy as her only help. She went through three months of withdrawals and lost “friends” rapidly, cried every night, and had cold sweats from all of the alcohol leaving her body. Her weekly therapy sessions were her escape. Her therapist kept her in line and had her take up new hobbies to fill her time without alcohol.
On the one-year anniversary of her therapy sessions, her therapist said she was making enough progress that they would only meet once a month. Vanessa was given some wise words and was told that she was still welcome to stop by in between if she wanted to.
Then Vanessa found out that her ex was moving to Texas to be with her new girlfriend. Two months after that, she got a SnapChat from her that she was engaged. Vanessa frantically called her therapist through a panic attack in Target. Vanessa didn’t think she was still in love with her ex. Her therapist asked if she had told her ex how she felt before she’d moved. She hadn’t. She was given the assignment to do so before it ate her up inside.
Vanessa spoke to her ex-girlfriend for half an hour about how hurt she was being told via SnapChat about the engagement, how angry she was that she could be so nonchalant about it, and how painful it was to see her with another woman. She cried within the first few minutes of the conversation, and throughout. When they finished the call, Vanessa felt relieved. It took a huge weight off her shoulders.
It all started with a breakup. That was what it took to get Vanessa to get help and finally find herself. She had lost sight of who she was for the longest time, because she chose to hide it away in a dark corner. In the following months and years since that breakup, Vanessa has celebrated almost six years of sobriety from pills and three and a half years of sobriety from alcohol. She has found her morals and learned to accept people and things she doesn’t understand. She has found that helping others on the same journey can be exhausting, but rewarding when done in small doses.
Her happiness comes before anything else in her life. She’s been called selfish by former friends, and she’s fine with that. It’s not that she doesn’t care about people or things, but the fact is that she can’t help others if she’s not in a balanced emotional/mental state. She never wants to feel like she did years ago when she tried to commit suicide. She takes great lengths to make sure that she doesn’t feel that low. There are days when she allows herself to remember that her depression is a part of her, but she doesn’t let it take control.
Since she’s started taking care of herself, she allows herself to cry more. She’s no longer afraid of her sensitive side. She makes it a point to cry at least once a week so she doesn’t bottle up all of that emotion and let it build. She encourages others to get help and find someone to help them deal with their issues. She offers her help, but she always states that she can only do so much before a professional is needed.
Vanessa has been told that she’s a beacon of hope and an inspiration to others. She feels honored, but at the same time, she doesn’t want the adoration. She says, “I’m just a person who fought through every obstacle that was tossed in her face because she was tired of truly being weak. I now stand up for what I believe is right, especially for women who are sexually harassed or assaulted. I use my experiences to help better the world around me, and all it took was a breakup.”
Realizing that self care is important doesn’t have to be some huge, life-altering thing. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Making small changes here and there can do wonders for your emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual state. Find what form of self care works for you and make that a part of your life. You could surprise yourself with the difference it makes.
Heather Linde is a straight up Slytherin who teaches, writes, and plays roller derby in her Muggle life.
