Care tasks exist for one reason only… to make your body and space functional enough for you to easily experience the joy this world has to offer.

If feeding yourself is very hard, turn your attention to kids’ food. Toddler food is designed to shotgun the maximum amount of nutrients into someone with a limited palate and an even more limited attention span.

Framing it as kindness instead of failure was the key to being able to wake up and choose to get things done the next day.

When did movement lose its pleasure? When did my adult life stop including activities that made movement joyful? Can I get it back? Can you? Can we try together?

Whether it’s hiring a cleaning service, meal delivery, curbside groceries, or using a wash and fold, as long as you treat people with respect and pay them what they are worth, it’s all morally neutral.

the subtle shift from obligation to option created motivation for me.

I so often look back on these seasons of limping through and say to myself with tenderness, “Wow, I was really doing the best I could with what I had.”

Striving to “be better” will exhaust the little energy you have, and it’s probably time better spent letting yourself cry and sleep and finding small pockets of joy to keep you going.

Self-care was never meant to be a replacement for community care.9