When your cup is empty...

How do you fill it back up?

One way is letting others care for you. This is a special feat for caretakers: to let someone else carry you, be there for you, show up for you. It’s hard whether they offer, or whether you need to ask for care. I cared for a friend this past weekend, driving with them up to Cleveland, Ohio, and in turn, I very much needed my partner to care for me when I returned home to Durham yesterday. On the drive home, I called them as a winter storm whitened the trees and the road, and my anxiety of snow driving needed to be calmed by their voice. When I got home, they had cleaned the house, and my dogs were happy, and they ordered and fed me lunch, and I took a nap while they picked up our kids from school.

So, a list of ways to fill your cup up when you are tired and have loved and given to others, and now need to love and give to yourself—in no particular order at all, because I am tired, and writing this in-between student appointments at work:

• Naps (plural; make them cozy, electric or acoustic blankets, add a cat or dog)

• Telling folks you are at capacity, and need to limit your emotional labor (this is often the area I am most taxed), especially if you have persons in your life prone to dumping/spilling/venting. Bravo, dear one.

• Good food. I’m serious about the protein and water, the tea, the liquids. Eat the things you find delicious and comforting, and also make them good for you. I love salmon—yesterday my love brought me the grilled salmon and eggplant curry noodle bowl I love from the Thai place next to our house. This returns to letting others care for you!

• Throw what you “should” do to the wind, and read something you actually really want to read (Mahmoud Darwish for me, lately), in bed, with that cozy blanket and tea, and segue into: a nap. Ahh, the best kind of reading.

• Watch a really beautiful film. Or something mindless and funny. Something bingeable. Or a gorgeous nature documentary. Delight yourself, I’m saying.

• Make hot chocolate on the stove. The way you will make your kitchen smell is infinitely wonderful, it’s not that much work at all, and it’s delicious and filling and also a sensory distraction: whisking the cocoa and sugar and water into a delicious, chocolately boil, pouring in the milk, bringing it back to heat, adding a little vanilla. Your senses will thank you.

• Hip stretches: resting in pigeon (I love pigeon), or forward folds, or folded butterfly pose

• Bubble baths, which I am going to HIT as soon as I am home today from work and school carlines. Leave your phone outside, take a book of poems or an audiobook you’re super into, and a sparkling water. Soak it out, baby.

• Intimacy: if you know me, you know I’m not shy about talking about intimacy, and part of resting for me is also physical intimacy—with my partner, with myself. Oh, it is good for me. It’s great before a NAP. (Maybe everything on this list ultimately comes back to the nap, haha.)

• Saying no to extra events and after-school events and by being intentional about down-time. This is an area I particularly shine at, since I’m fairly certain I’m part hobbit. Stay inside, avoid that cold rain and Covid/Bird Flu/Norovirus, and rest.

You might have noticed that (some of) these (particularly the core nap recommendation) are ways a parent might care for you—we must parent ourselves, and each other, and also be aware of our limits in parenting and caring. We must rest. I hope you find real rest this week. We need each other because the caretakers cannot give everything all the time. We cannot. Remember that boundaries are for you, not other people. Now go have a cup of tea, and chase that naptime. And rest, as much as you can. Keep a tender “no, not this time,” in your back pocket.

Han