Prioritizing Your Emotional Self-Care

We’ve reached the final installment of this self-care series a couple of years in the making. Last but certainly not least, I want to discuss emotional health. Protect your peace, my sisters. Be mindful of what you are watching and listening to, which is ultimately deposited into your spirit and impacts your emotional well-being.

Go to therapy. It’s not taboo — it’s helpful. You are no less a strong black woman because you took the time to sit on someone’s couch and talk through your feelings and history.

I’m a witness that it works. It helped me process some immense grief I experienced a few years ago after my Grandfather passed away 11 days after my destination wedding. He told other attendees that he wasn’t missing this occasion as long as he had breath in his body. And he did just that. I carried A LOT of guilt over his passing, and my therapist at the time provided some helpful tools that helped me cope and ultimately heal.

I’m a better wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend for undergoing those therapeutic exercises. Yet another example of why self-care is not selfish!!!

You’ve got to do the important work.

Take the time to do something just for you each day. It doesn’t have to be a tropical vacation or a long massage, although please don’t deny yourselves of those either.

It can be 5 minutes in your car belting out your favorite song. It can be getting up from your desk and taking a brisk stroll around your building. It’s awesome to be passionate about your work and the difference you’re making in your community, but there’s only one you.

I want you to take a moment, wherever you’re reading this, to wrap your arms around yourself and just give yourself a little squeeze. Say I love you. I appreciate this body. I am grateful for this life. I hope that moment blesses you.

Doesn’t it feel good?

That’s self-care. It was quick. It didn’t take a lot, but those warm fuzzies just at that moment can change the outlook of your entire day.

Take the time to love yourself. To remember and know that you are beautifully, fearfully and wonderfully made and that you are still here for a reason.

Self-care in these areas of spiritual, physical, intellectual, consumer, and emotional health is not selfish. It’s necessary. It allows you to be the best version of yourself, and in turn, you can show up as such for the people you love and care about or just for yourself because, at times, that can be just enough.