I know typically New Year’s resolutions, intentions and goals are active things. Things we’d like to accomplish or participate in or do. I’d love to invite you to consider being intentional about rest this year! 

Rest not only allows our bodies to heal and function more effectively, it also creates mental and emotional space for us to consider what is most meaningful in our lives and where we’d like to put our time and energy. 

Is resting easy for you? What are the barriers that prevent you from resting? How do you like to rest when you get the chance? Who do you know who rests well? What’s one easy, first step you could take to prioritize rest?

It's often easy to feel like winter is a write-off. It's dark and cold. The holidays are overly-consumerist or overly religious or overly complicated. It can feel like there's no middle ground between "it's the most wonderful time of the year" and seasonal depression.

And yet. I think it's worth considering what gifts winter might have for each of us. We all need different things in different seasons. What are the ways that winter might be able to care for you? What practices or mindset shifts might help you make the most of the dark? 

As a poet at heart, metaphors are my lifeblood. I love the many different winter and holiday stories and symbols we find in traditions all over the world. I love the active practice of hope that decorating or singing together or lighting a candle can be. I love the promise of the return of the light, while knowing that the dark, too, is essential to our well-being. 

Do I love every rainy day and dark morning? No, but I do love the story winter is telling me about rest and patient waiting, about all the unseen things that happen in the dark so that the earth can bloom again in a few short months. 

What story do you want winter to tell? What gifts might winter have to offer you? 

Pretend for a minute that your body is your best friend and you want to get her/them/him a gift for the holidays. What are her likes and dislikes? What's always on their wishlist? What have you noticed he needs lately? 

Thinking about our bodies as a real person versus an "it" can change so much about how we approach ourselves. 

Intrigued about shifting your perception of your body and cultivating a friendship with her/them/him? Check out Hillary McBride's books "The Wisdom of Your Body" and "Practices for Embodied Living". We have both here at My Inner Harbour!

I've thought about self-care so much this year, from hosting a read-along of Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin for friends last spring to working with clients on their self-care practices to getting My Inner Harbour up and running. So I thought it would be helpful for me to actual capture how I practiced what I preached this year. 

Here are 5 ways I practiced my own self-care this year:

1. Limited screen time (thank you ScreenZen app) and read more novels. I love reading and it was so good for me to spend more of my evenings enjoying a good story vs. scrolling. 

2. Moved my body as often as I could, whether through dancing in the kitchen while making dinner, going for a walk with a friend or working out at home or with my trainer. Also got to do a kayak trip with my dad that was amazing! 

3. Prioritized time with friends! My husband and I both highly value friendships and work to support each others' ability to get out of the house and spend time with them. Friends are critical and I loved every coffee date, book club meeting, pickleball game, and impromptu hang out. Highlight: the Garden Party with a dash of poetry I hosted this summer. 

4. Regular spiritual direction. Similar to therapy, spiritual direction is about listening deeply to your life in the presence of a compassionate witness. That one hour with my spiritual director every month gives me a container to examine how I'm really doing, make space for all my various experiences and emotions and practice grounding. 

5. Permission to slow down. I regularly give myself permission to slow down and not accomplish all the things on my to-do list in favour of actually savouring time in the garden, playing a game with my kids, getting out to the beach or taking a nap! Is it easy? No, that's why I have to repeat myself regularly! Is it worth it? Every time. 

What about you? How have you cared for yourself this year? 

Do you journal? I've journaled in different formats off and on for years, noticing that in different seasons certain ways of engaging are easier than others. Lists were all I could manage in the early days of parenting, but I love a good memory deep dive. One year, my family each wrote down their favourite holiday memories from childhood and it was fascinating to see what was meaningful to all of us. 

What kind of prompt do you resonate most with? What makes it easy to write? 

Want more inspiration? Check out these awesome journalling resources: 

"Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice" by local poet Mary Ann Moore (available in our local library or on her website.)

The International Association of Journal Writing 

In her best-selling book, “Real Self-Care”, Pooja Lakschmin, a psychiatrist, asks us to consider what self-care really is. In an age of myriad wellness products and services it can feel overwhelming to know what really makes a difference and what doesn’t.

Lakshmin makes the case the self-care isn’t actually any one of those services or products. “Self-care is an inside job,” she says. Meaning that what makes any particular self-care practice or method effective is how we’re approaching it internally.

In her book, Lakshmin differentiates between methods and principles. We have thousands of wonderful self-care methods, but we need solid principles to help guide us in choosing the methods we need. When we know what our core values are, have boundaries in place to protect those values and can speak kindly and compassionately to ourselves about our needs, we’re doing the real work of self-care. 

My hope is that My Inner Harbour will help members lay the foundation of true self-care. Our space is set up to help members gain insight into their own core values, explore setting boundaries and practice speaking compassionately to themselves.