Self-care isn’t selfish; it’s a survival tactic.

Last Fall I had two major life events in front of me. They seemed too huge to grapple with, too big to wrap around my head around their monumental nature. The first was that my sister and I would be moving our mom into an assisted living facility. The second was that my seven year old son would be having open heart surgery 500 miles away from home. Both of these events would occur in November, less than three weeks apart.

I knew a couple of things as summer ended, the kids went back to school, and the leaves started falling: thinking about these events made me feel panicked and it was going to take an enormous output of energy to get through them both.

The hardest part of Mom’s move would be that she was not, let’s say, 100% on board with it. However, the condition she had been diagnosed with eight years prior, a rare form of dementia called Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA), had continued to eat away at her ability to take care of herself. Not only could she no longer get dressed on her own or prepare food, but this evil devil called vertigo had marched into her life. Now I was being called about her getting dizzy and falling on the regular. We were seeing all sorts of specialists: ENT, Audiology, Psychiatry, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy. No one could figure out the vertigo. It quickly came to a point where I could not continue as one of the two people (my sister being the other) who received SOS calls to figure out what to do when the dizziness led to Mom collapsing on the floor. I was constantly terrified of my phone ringing. We had to get Mom to a place where they were equipped to take care of people in this sort of situation, where nursing staff is always around, and I wouldn’t be called to drop every single thing and run to her several times a week.

For the heart surgery I knew that my daughter’s well-being would weigh heavily on me, even though she was not the one undergoing surgery. My son was born at Boston Children’s Hospital and he’d undergone several heart procedures there over the years, so we knew at least a little bit about that world. But my 9 year old daughter was not comfortable in the hospital and would be staying back home without her us. Since we don’t have grandparents available to help out, planning for her care would be tricky. She’s also a different kind of kid that requires a different kind of parenting, so I was worried about who would be a good fit.

The good news was that these were both planned events, which meant I had time to consider all of these things. I realize the enormous privilege afforded to me walking through these things; Mom had the financial means so that choices for senior care were available to us, we had solid health insurance and the ability to travel for surgery. Given that, it all still felt too huge to tackle.

The logistics had to be planned, but I knew I needed to take care of my own mental health and energy as we went into these things. I was a key player - if something happened to me, all of this would fall apart. I didn’t want to barely survive the month of November and come out the other side absolutely depleted. I wanted to build up my reserve. I wanted to store up energy and peace so that it would be available to me when times got tough.

I’m a person who needs time alone in quiet to regain energy. I was going to need a lot of that leading up to November. I decided to make my long walks non-negotiable. Getting outside and walking through the woods near my house was at the top of my to do list. Next, I added in restorative yoga. I had been recently introduced to the concept by author and yoga therapist, Jillian Pransky. Jillian’s work in deep listening, the practice of using yoga poses to access stillness and relaxation in the mind and body, was a balm to my stormy soul. At least twice a week I prioritized getting into a restorative yoga position and staying there for 20 minutes. While in the pose, I listened to a guided meditation.

I was also doing weekly acupuncture. It wasn’t helping the problem I intended it for (migraine), but it was incredibly helpful in calming me down. It was another place to shelter me from the storm of activity swirling around my days. I protected those appointments like gold. Laying on the bed in the darkened room, salt lamp glowing and instrumental music playing softly, I pictured the stress leaving my body through those little pinpricks.

As the season progressed, my little world felt more chaotic. I was coordinating and running my mom to all those appointments and also researching and visiting assisted living facilities, while trying to keep my day job and my business afloat. At home, I was missing kids’ games and activities while the brunt of running the household fell to my husband.

Soon, the routine of walking, yoga, and acupuncture felt critical to my ability to function. I would run, run, run around and then rest in a restorative yoga pose. I saw that I needed what felt like extreme self-care to get through the present moment, forget about storing up for the future. My stress was high and these practices brought me back to baseline.

There were days when I did not even think about the upcoming heart surgery. A friend would ask how I was feeling about it and I would respond that I wasn’t feeling much because all of my energy was focused on my mom. Plus, I could feel my community rallying around us for Griffin’s surgery. My best friend was going to take care of my daughter for the first week. My neighbors used their credit card points to buy us airline tickets to Boston. His teacher was thoughtfully planning for his time away and even the principal reached out.

The caregiving for mom and planning for assisted living was the exact opposite. Isolating and lonely. None of my friends had been through this. The only stories I heard were of my friends’ parents figuring this out for their grandparents. A whole generation away from me and my family. So I leaned on the support of my community to help me prepare for surgery and I used my self-care practices to keep me marching on for Mom.

Finally, we moved her in the new place. It was not a smooth transition. There were many incidents and many tears (from my mom and from me). But she was there.

A couple of weeks later, my husband, my son and I got ourselves safely up to Boston. We settled into the Ronald-McDonald type house where we would be staying. It was peaceful. I got to go to my favorite bookstore in the world, brookline booksmith, and simply stroll. The frantic energy I had been carrying left me.

The night before surgery, the three of us snuggled together in one double bed, Griffin between my husband and I. We prayed for our incredible surgeon and the rest of the team and for our little miracle boy who didn’t ask for this life. The next morning, we walked into the hospital, kissed our baby goodbye, and watched him get wheeled away. I felt both very scared and grounded. The nurse coordinator gave me a huge hug and told me to put my hand on my heart every time I felt scared and say “I’m grateful”.

The surgery went so much more smoothly that my mom’s transition. There were issues that came up later, but while we were away and Griffin was recovering, things progressed mostly as expected. We felt cared for. In a strange and twisted way, that time felt like a break from dealing with Mom’s issues. It felt weird at the time that hospital life could be an escape, but it felt so nourishing and peaceful to focus only on Griffin.

Do whatever you can to make self-care non-negotiable

It took all of these major events to finally convince me that it is essential to fill my own cup if I want to pour into others. Now I know that even in times of relative calm, self-care practices are not negotiable. The self-care practices saved me. I would have burned myself out without them. By the time I finally got to the surgery I don’t think I would have been able to find peace. But I had been doing them. So, instead, while grappling with fear, I also felt a deep sense of centeredness and courage.

This is why I won’t stop talking about how women need to put themselves at the top of their to-do list.