“I do have a thing, to be honest with you, about how self care is marketed and advertised.”
When Dr Emily Musgrove uttered those words, I wanted to high five her through the Zoom screen.
YES, DR EM. Say more!
“Self care has often been conceptualised as a luxury, luxurious thing to be engaging in. It's very self-indulgent. And it looks like massages, and getting your nails done. And I think that misses the whole point.”
Somewhere along the way, self-care got hijacked. It became a day spa voucher you feel vaguely guilty using, or the beauty treatment you “don’t really need” but really enjoy. Self care has become this thing we treat ourselves to once we’ve “earned it”.
And look, there's nothing wrong with a trip to the day spa. (I'll take one any day!) But if that's what we think self care is, then it becomes one more thing that costs a lot of money, takes time we don't have, and lives permanently on the “one day” list.
There’s no care in adding to the to-do list.
So I asked Dr Em what real self care actually is.
“It’s about how you genuinely care for yourself. It’s the capacity to tune into what it is that you most need, so that you can then show up in the best possible way to the next parts of your life.”
She was clear that self care shouldn’t be a privilege. Just: what do I actually need right now, and can I give myself that?
Some days the honest answer is rest. Some days it might be moving your body. And some days, Dr Em said, it's the part of you “that wants to be creative, the part that wants to generate something”.
What you do isn’t the point. The point is that you stopped and asked yourself the question, and then listened to the answer.
If there’s one thing Dr Em could encourage more women to do?
“Oh, to care for themselves!”
Self care isn’t selfish and it isn’t a luxury, she said.
“It actually becomes exponentially helpful to everyone in your life. The more that you are caring for yourself, the more you're caring for others.”
Dr Em’s reframe is the entire reason Kate and I built Unwind Co. Since the very first Google Doc we created together, we had our mission statement: To inspire women to embrace mindful moments of creativity as an act of self care.
We believe in it so strongly it’s printed on the inside of every Unwind box.
We didn’t want to just create another thing for women to buy. (The irony of that is not lost on me.) We wanted to eliminate decision fatigue and make the kind of self care that actually refuels you feel genuinely accessible, whether it’s for 10 minutes or an hour.
Inside the Spring Unwind box, dropping September 10