Moving Beyond Self-Care to Self-Devotion: Honoring Your Divine Self

(Excerpted from my article of the same title, published in myddle earth Samhain issue 2022, available for members)

Right after I wake up, I focus on what other people need. I look at my messages and email to find the direction of my day. I know it’s not the best start. It pulls me away from myself immediately. It causes me to center the needs of others before even asking myself, “How are you doing?” or “What do you need today?”

I’m not sure there is a singular secret to life. But I do know there is a way to live life in a more nourishing and kind way. It begins with recognizing that self-care is more than just a trend. It’s far more than a remedy or a quick fix. Self-care is the promise you give to yourself, the promise to show up and to care for the person you are — just as you are in this moment.

Self-Care is More Than Spa Day

Because of the commodification of self-care practices, it’s easy to think caring for the self is a strategy to employ when things get ‘bad’ or something you can buy. The overculture makes it terribly easy to think a bubble bath or a face mask will allow us to get back to work, back to the family, back to the grind of life. Back to being ‘productive’ members of society.

Actual self-care is the practice of noticing how you can care for yourself before your life becomes overwhelming and you must stop. True self-care is an act of devotion to the self you are. In all moments, not just the hard ones. (But also the hard ones.) To care for yourself because you’re worthy of care.

It might be helpful to bring reverence to this practice, so I’ve been calling it self-devotion instead of care. According to Oxford Languages, devotion is “love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause.” And while devotion is also related to religious and spiritual practices, I think it’s more about the feeling than the target of the feeling. What do you hold sacred in your life? What are you completely, utterly devoted to?

Could you be devoted to yourself? And in that devotion, offer yourself earnest, ongoing care?

(The rest is available in the published article…)