If you've been working too hard and vehemently not practicing what you preach - "take care of yourself! take naps!" she croons blithely while waking up at o'dark thirty, reaching for her laptop, and going under for ten hours - a face swollen with poison oak and an optometrist who says "how did your eyes get that much worse in a month?" is a bitch slap to wake up. We teach what we most need to learn. It's why I'm always on about self-care and self-love and connecting with yourself. Because I will actively and insistently not take care of myself - I don't have time! I need to attack my to-do list! I need to make money!* - until my body is required to battle with a vicious plant and basically blind me to make me stop.
* fear, fear, fear - something I remember when I'm taking care of myself
I can't do the work I do - write and create and channel - without taking care of myself. First. Not as an after-thought. Not after my body wrestles me to the floor and makes me beg for mercy.
Every morning is for me, not for work. I need to run or dance daily. Every breakfast is to be eaten on the deck in the sun, with no devices and no distractions. Every meditation is to find out if my heart has something to say or if it's just my head hosting a gremlin party, cackling and poking my fear-centers with their pitchforks. I need to plop down in front of my altar and re-find the peace. If the day goes south at any point, I need to haul my butt right back there and remind myself of what is true. Pull my thoughts into the center of my head and drop them into the calm well of my heart. Peace, not noise.
Because writing from my head doesn't do anything for anyone. Thoughts, old voices, static. But when I'm taking care of myself, I get pulled. Pulled into something that needs to be said, something that comes from a place of love and occasional near-tears. That's when it connects and resonates and the magic happens.
Bonus: More naps and less worrying.