Self-care and mental health

this is why the fresh start effect is powerful but fragile. it works like a spark, lighting us up and igniting motivation for a moment, but unless we build rhythms to hold that spark, it fizzles.

Because people who write things like that have no idea what it’s like to live on a tightrope. They don’t understand that when you’re already saying “no” to yourself and to your children a hundred times a week, that one small coffee isn’t a luxury. It’s a lifeline.

It’s ten minutes of sitting in a warm place that isn’t your own house, with its pile... See more

the irony, of course, is that the old self never stays neatly filed away. they walk with us into the new chapter, uninvited but insistent. the bad habits return, the doubts tag along, the to-do list keeps growing like ivy.