With apologies for all the un-done things

The unfamiliarity of radical self-care

Back in the spring, just as the cherry tree in my garden sent its blossom floating to the ground, my mother died and a chasm opened up in the floor of my life. When I shared this news with my online community – strangers I consider friends – I received a flood of hundreds of beautiful, personal emails. Many people didn’t know what to say, but said something anyway, which I appreciated very much. Some people shared their own stories of loss and devastation, knowing that it wouldn’t fix anything, but wondering if might help, and it did. Some of the notes made more difference to me than things people I actually know in real life said, and I will never forget them.

I made a commitment to reply one by one to every single email, but allowed myself the grace of not putting a time limit on that. My heart could only handle a few replies a week, and it has taken me until now, seven months later, to send the last of the replies to the kind stranger-friends who sent me emails back in that darkest of times.

This made me think about the things I have managed to finish this year – of which there are few, and almost every one of them later than planned – and the things I haven’t managed to finish, of which there are many, some of which have now been completely abandoned as casualties of this hardest of years.

As I thought about this, I started to be tough on myself. This is not like you. You are normally much better at getting things done. You’ve slacked off, haven’t you? You should be ashamed that you have let your standards slide, whatever the excuse. But the curious thing was, as soon as that voice got started, another one replied, closing it down quietly but firmly with this, which I wasn’t expecting:

“With apologies for everything that has gone un-done, you need to know this: it wasn’t slacking, it was radical self-care.”

Huh.

The wise heart was speaking, and it continued, “When darkness falls, nature demands we retreat. Sometimes we are better served by candles illuminating what is right in front of us, than glaring overhead lights revealing the clutter of the world all around.”

This is the voice I am choosing to listen to now.

I have given so much of my life’s attention to the clutter of our noisy world, when so often I would have been better served focusing on only that which can be illuminated by a single candle in front of me. I am sure I’m not the only one.

So today, I opened up a new folder in my inbox, called it ARCHIVE, and moved into it everything which falls outside of the glow of the particular candle I am meditating on at this point in my life. It has become The Folder of All That Shall Remain Un-done.

With apologies for the emails un-replied to, the interviews unaccepted, the jobs un-ticked-off the list, everything that has been allowed to unravel as I myself was undone and the world became unmade this year.

In an act of radical self-care, I am forgiving myself for all of it.

How about you? Tell me, what might radical self-care look like for you this winter?

Beth Xx

PS My new book KOKORO: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived is OUT NOW.

Photos: Holly Bobbins Photography