My Turn: Learning self-care means first loving myself

Throughout my life, there have been many words and phrases I never included in my vocabulary. One phrase I never applied to myself was “self-care.” What exactly was self-care to me? Really nothing I could define.

Self-care was not something that I grew up incorporating into my daily life. Sleeping late, spas, massages were all for other people, a waste of time, according to my mother’s philosophy about life.

I don’t think anyone in my family ever did any self-care, nor would they know where to go for it. The biggest self-care immersion for them was the local beauty parlor down the block; it was not frequented so much when they were younger, but as the women got older they went once a week to get their tight curls and perms. Among my Italian relatives, self-care was defined as getting a compliment on the dinners they made, the curtains they hung and the homes they kept spotless. There is nothing wrong with this, believe me, but I experienced this as antiquated and self-limiting.

So my care was always projected outward toward people I loved and those whom I needed to please. The message I internalized was: You always should be helping others, giving of yourself outward. Don’t focus on your needs, as this was looked upon as selfish and self-serving. “Good people” were the ones who gave of themselves wholly, until they depleted everything they had within themselves.

And I chose a profession — nursing — that diverted me away from thoughts of self-care. I then chose to teach nursing, always looking out, never looking in. Of course, this absence from the circle of self-care was also reflected in and impacted my weight issues; my struggle with my weight was the negative sidekick that I carried with me for my entire life.

My husband was brought up the same way, but he took better care of himself than I did. He exercised on a NordicTrack three times a week and did a 3.2-mile walk every Sunday. He always seemed to make time for himself.

Now that my husband is gone and my children are grown, I have nowhere to look but inside myself.

In order to provide self-care, one must possess some self-love — this is what I have learned in the past several years of my geriatric progression. This has been a difficult lesson for me to learn because looking inward and trying to soothe such deep cultural ingrains is painful. In my experience, women were not trained to value themselves or their attributes.

But the good news: I am starting to understand Buddhism thanks to a close friend. I’ve learned just the basics, enough to help me begin to understand myself without judging myself. I am entering this year trying to think of me first. It’s a difficult thing for me to do, but I am doing my best to put negative feelings aside.

I want to convince myself that massages are OK for overweight people; I want to feel comfortable going for one in my own skin. As I am the person I am living with every day, it would be nice, as the song goes, to “have a friend in me.”

Carol Giuliani,

St. James