Bonus issue #01: What is Self-Care During Times of Crisis?
How to take care of yourself when it feels like the world is disintegrating around you.
This is a bonus issue of Sitting in a Tree, available to all paid and free subscribers. The Weekly REPORT is a weekly feature in all paid issues released every Thursday, but an abridged version of it is included in this issue, as a little sampler.
Within the past week, the crisis in Gaza has worsened, there’s a resulting rise in anti-semitism and Islamophobia everywhere, there was a mass shooting in Maine (killing 18 people + injuring 13 others), an anti-LGBTQ rights / anti-abortion / religious zealot became the 56th Speaker of the House in the U.S., Hurricane Otis destroyed the city of Acapulco, and Matthew Perry died (I’m not saying that’s an equivalent in any way to the literal war happening, just that this celebrity’s death was highly emotional for many of us, especially for whom FRIENDS was a life vest during mental health struggles).
All within one week. If we’re splitting hairs here, I think all of those occurrences happened within the last 5 days, which makes it so much worse.
With everything happening in the world, it often feels that most of us are at a loss at how to process things “correctly.” But there is no correct methodology for digesting uninterrupted devastation and collective grief. We’re all just stumbling our way through navigating this. Generations before us have certainly seen and lived through their share of hardships and world crises, but we’re truly living in unprecedented times. Thanks to our phones and social media, we’re inundated with more discourse and headlines served to us dizzingly faster than Serena William’s raquet can. Then we’re expected to not only process and digest said information, but also to then make thoughtfully cohesive and well-researched proclamations of our opinions on the often complicated historical roots of tragedies that apexed only 24 hours ago.
Simply existing in these times can often feel like the perpetual whiplash you’d get from your head being used as a speedbag. It’s hard to not struggle with showing up for your every day responsibilities without feeling like you’re living in the twilight zone — trying to care in meetings in which you’re discussing marketing trends feels WILDLY trivial, when placed in contrast to any of the happenings around us. Whenever I share that I’m feeling this way on my pages, I am always met with the overwhelming consensus that we are all feeling similarly.
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-Sincerely, an Instagram therapist
Along with all the postings of activist memes on your feed, there’s the regular and persistent reminder from all the Instagram therapists to take care of yourself and set boundaries during these fraught occasions. While I completely agree that taking care of yourself and your mental health amidst the slog of depressing news is vital, I sometimes have a very visceral reaction to that advice when I see it— like, what do you MEAN, how am I supposed to go take a damn bath and stop my brain from having doom and gloom thoughts bubble to the surface like this $20 bubble bath soap that promised to take my troubles away with aromatherapy magic?? How am I supposed to be a conscious citizen of our world by willfully setting boundaries with my news intake, doesn’t this mean I’m turning away from the atrocities of the world??
Parsing Out Self-Care
Something I’d like to remind us all of here, especially for the purposes of talking about self-care in this regard (during crisis), is that the term itself, “self-care,” has been utterly bastardized. The phrase itself is now inoculated with woo woo luxury, conjuring up prescriptive imagery of pampering, restorative activities that usually come with a price tag.
I don’t mean to dismiss the value of those delightful activities of rest, I’d like to just boil them down to their humble roots: what is a bath supposed to help you do? What feelings does going out of the house to buy a $6 coffee evoke? What frame of mind is achieved by a 15-minute yoga flow? What is achieved by going for a quiet 10 minute walk? AKA, what are these acts vehicles FOR?
I’d say that the ideal outcome of many of these self-care labeled activities is an intermeshed twofold: being utterly present (thus slowing down and steering away from anxiety of uncontrollable theoretical future happenings), and reconnecting with your literal senses.
The adage of taking things one thing at a time rings especially true in times of collective grief like this. There is only so much that the human brain is built to process at once, and reflection is impossible when all you’re doing is participating in chugging from the media funnel of intake.
Focusing solely on the everyday mundane tasks you have, can become an active meditation. While walking your pup, just walk and pay attention to your pup without scrolling absentmindedly. While cooking dinner, don’t listen to a podcast, just immerse yourself in the sounds of your clumsy chopping skills and smells of the food cooking. If you do have a chance to woo woo self care via a facial or some other treat, don’t treat it as time to run through your to-do list in your head; focus on the sensation of the technician’s hands and settle into the darkness of the room. We often participate in self-care activities without being an active participant, treating them like activities meant to bestow some semblance of peace and rejuvenation onto us, rather than realizing that we, too, play a role in fully absorbing what those activities are offering.
While these practices obviously don’t change the issues at hand, they make us more adept at moving through them with a steadier state of mind and capable of helping in our own ways.
The Necessary Dissonance + Escapes: Let go of the guilt
There are times lately when all I want to see on my social media is something light-hearted, but then I proceed to scroll and am quickly disgusted by seeing trivial “fall clothing hauls,” when my brain reminds me that there are bigger, horrible things are happening. But then after my guilt propels me into a doomscroll spiral of what is happening around me, I spring up to go bury my nose in a fiction book (you know reality is dark when escaping into my book about a serial killer is like a nice vacation) because it feels suffocating. The thought of my forehead wrinkles then pop into my head, as I instinctively furrow my brow while reading, followed by checking my phone and feeling ludicrous for egotistical thoughts as the world burns.
It can be a vicious cycle of oscillating between needing the cognitive dissonance and escape, then feeling guilty and judgmental about it. Being a creator with a public platform, it is also not helped by people coming into your DMs to chastise you as an outlet for their grief. I had posted an Instagram story yesterday about how horrified I was to discover a dead mouse in our yard, while weeding, and then got a mocking message about my horror over a dead mouse when there are thousands of murdered children in Gaza, as if I hadn’t posted my grief over this so many times in the last couple weeks.
This is why I’d argue that a healthy dose of active dissonance during times like these is necessary. It is a form of setting boundaries for yourself.
There’s a reason why fantasy books are increasingly popular, rom-coms are definitely making a comeback, and why we are titillated into a frenzy over a popstar’s budding romance with a football player. Similar to why it’s okay for couples to go to bed angry and need some space before tackling conflict resolution, sometimes we need a little breathing room from those current events in order to get our nervous systems out of flight or flight, so that we can digest them beyond our initial emotionally-heightened reactions. Disconnecting in order to reconnect is okay. After all, we can’t critically think and reflect to our best abilities in states of stress.
Would love to know how you have been coping (or struggling to) with current world events! How do you feel about self care in times of crises?
What I’m currently Reading, Eating, Playing, Obsessing, Recommending, and Thinking About
READING:
I pre-ordered Iron Flame, the sequel to Fourth Wing, which comes out November 7th— I’ll have to do my best to save diving into it for a post-surgical treat. Currently in the midst of Bright Young Women (loving it so far), finished Kerry Washington’s memoir, Thicker Than Water, have Book Lovers in my Libby queue.
EATING:
I finally made a recipe video (full recipe in the caption) of my signature Chicken Butternut Noodle soup, which I’ve been wanting to teach J how to make, so he can make it for my post-surgery recovery. It’s the perfectly warming, nourishing soup with lots of veggie goodness. I also got these “soup cube” molds to freeze soups in prep for my recovery! Big on comfort foods right now, and this recipe for Homemade Sloppy Joes is calling my name. I’m also eating an obnoxious amount of Trader Joe’s Rice Cracker Medley, so much so that my jaw is hurting from it.
PLAYING:
I, along with everyone else that needs every bit of serotonin we can get right now, have been blasting Taylor’s version of 1989 — this album has a special connotation for me. When the original was released in fall of 2014, I was a 24 year old living in NYC: fresh off launching my blog, adjusting to life with my autoimmune disease, enduring the early days of Tinder and dating in the city, and feeling simultaneously overwhelmed by not having my life figured out, but also excited at the possibilities that life could change very quickly in an instant because of that open-ended nature of that chapter of my life. It felt like a second wave of formative years, and the album was a perfect soundtrack for that time in my life.
OBSESSING:
Y’all probably already know about my love for the Dazzle Dry system (I will never do gel again), but I just bought this Glisten and Glow mini set of 5 very holiday vibes polish that gives me an inexplicable amount of inner child happiness at the sparkles. After a year of mostly neutrals for wedding year, I’m all about color right now. Side note, this referral link (that they give to all paying customers, not a creator thing) will give you 20% off your first $65+ order.
RECOMMENDING:
I’ve been loving Osea’s undaria body oil for months now (the only body oil I’ve loved, FYI), and my manager + friend gifted me this undaria body polish as part of my birthday present, and it’s a DELIGHT to use and pretend I can scrub all my troubles away.
THINKING ABOUT:
Matthew Perry’s passing. How Taylor apparently eats, pays, and GTFO. Why the most successful marriages are start-ups, not mergers.
’s guide to gift giving. All about nasal congestion (and how your nose is connected to your armpits, WHAT). Call me crazy, but I’ve never liked store-bought pesto. The domestic load gender inequality, exemplified by marathon training. What I wish I would have known before my first breast biopsy.Loving this newsletter? I’d be forever grateful if you spread the word! Questions, feedback, thoughts, requests for what you want to hear about in here— just reply to this email to share it all with me. ‘Til next Thursday, take care of your bodies ❤️ Minna
