Today I am thinking about all the ways we replenish — or don’t.
Slept a little too much, and that only means that I didn’t get up early enough to do as much writing as I’d like to do. It definitely doesn’t mean that I slept enough. Still tired, but in that bone-dread way, like I could never sleep enough. That tells me that I’m empty somewhere, putting too much out and not filling back up enough, not replenishing the stores.
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky talks about this in Trauma Stewardship, when we’re thinking about self-care — and remembering that self-care is community-care is care and commitment to the work and the struggle, since, when we burn out, we’re defeating our larger purpose. We can each, always, find even five minutes a day to recenter on wellness, take a break, meditate, breathe deep, laugh hard. These things, even as brief as they have to be sometimes, keep us in our skin. Let me use I-statements: they keep me in my damn skin, keep me ok with being in here.