Word of the Year: Self Care

Note: December is Word-of-the-Year Month at Christine’s Blog.  As we roll into another New Year, each day will feature a new guest blogger who chose one word as a way of setting intention for her whole year.  Today’s guest is Mary Gordon. More about Mary below.

I chose my word for the year for no more good reason than a slight nagging thought that there was probably more I could be doing to take care of myself. I’d been working hard at several jobs, juggling my creative life in between, and cultivating family and friendships. Certain things had got lost. I had done a lot of self care in the past to get over CFS/ME.

Self Care seemed a good word of the year all around, I couldn’t be a loser by choosing ‘Self Care’.

It started off well I made appointments for dental checkups, cervical smears, chiropody and restarted my organic veg deliveries.

Then I began my 3 month full time stint in my job in a festival. It’s highly time constrained with large egos. A few weeks after I started, when my original resolution to walk to work went out of the window due to lack of time, my feet started to itch. Then they cracked and blistered. I went to a herbalist and tried salves; I used sprays as recommended by my chiropodist. Nothing seemed to work.

Then I went to a summer school in London after my job finished. I had blissful week and a half of wandering around the city following my whim and taking photographs, followed by an intense week of study which I loved. My brain was active and engaged and my fellow students were stimulating and fascinating. One day I realised my feet were healed. No itch!

I thought things were going more swimmingly as I sailed into the second half of the year. Then the Universe said ‘HA!”  I had a sort of migraine and dizzy spell in the shower and mentioned it to a friend who is a nurse. She urged me to get checked out by a doctor as she said a dizzy spell could mean low blood pressure. I caved in and went to the doctor. He checked my blood pressure and said it was way too high. He recommended 30 mins of exercise a day and cutting back on salt. He seemed disappointed to learn I’d never smoked and was an organic vegetable box, cooking from scratch kind of person. I promised to return in a month.

Within 3 days I’d got the most awful cold and cough and plans to swim every day with my friend Charley went out of the window.  I had to take time off my job as I couldn’t speak on the phone for coughing and fielded stern emails from Charley about my lack of appearance at 7.15am at the local pool.

I returned to the doctor who checked my blood pressure again – it was worse and he wanted to put me onto blood pressure medication. I stalled him until my return from a 6 week trip to Australia where I planned to relax completely, walk and swim which I hoped would restore my blood pressure to normal.

En route to Australia I stopped off in LA and my hostess there spoke about being diagnosed with sleep apnea. Now I’ve been snoring for some years now – I joke that my cat thinks its ‘human purring’ as she sleeps curled up on me. It turns out that sleep apnea is linked to high blood pressure.  Something not mentioned by my doctor. It’s something I’m going to get checked out as soon as I get home.

So what have I learned?

Self Care has as much to do with who you know, your community and what makes you alive. More so than antioxidants or exercise programmes. Noticing what makes me feel good is more important than externally imposed ‘programmes’. For me it is Yiddish Summer School.

Don’t sit back meekly and take what is handed out to you medically. Do research find out more.

Sorting out my work life so I can do the things that make me feel alive will be the biggest self care I do.

When I’m stressed my feet go crazy. I have barometer feet!

——

Mary Gordon is a filmmaker, photographer, and creativity facilitator in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her passions are travel, knitting, blogging, learning Yiddish. Her blog is Creative Voyage.

Tagged as: Personal Growth, word-of-the-year

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