Self Care — Advocating for Yourself

 Advocating for myself is something I am just now learning to do at my ripe old age.  I am learning to say no or, if I say yes, it is on my terms.  

I came from a mother who just gave herself away to other people until there was nothing left to give.  She passed at my current age and if she had been a little more into self care I might have her still, she might know my grandchildren.  But that isn’t what happened. 

I am not going to let history repeat itself.

I think I have fibromyalgia and have been doing lots of reading about it.  I know I have anxiety — some days worst than others — and I know that I have to do what it takes to not let it get the best of me.  So, between the anxiety and the pain and the fatigue, I have to take care of me first so I can take care of others.

For a long time, putting myself first has felt indulgent and I have suffered guilt — I seem to have surpassed that now though, which sort of surprises me.  But, I feel like I have earned the right to say no.  I have taken care of lots of people through lots of things and now it is time to take care of me.  I have been hurt by people, family members, and nobody came to my defense so I am coming to my own defense now.  If it offends, so be it.  

Tonight is our annual church dinner at a local, well known Mexican restaurant, Joe T Garcia’s.  It is a time of fun and fellowship and I look forward to it.  I have already done  my beauty caretaking in anticipation of the event (haha, that means I washed my hair!) and am ready to go.  I guess my fragrance for this evening will be mosquito repellant because we seem to be growing a bumper crop here at the beginning of fall and this restaurant has an outdoor patio with LOTS of plants. So, yeah.

It will be a fun evening and I think the weather will be good, we are supposed to have a cold front (Texas style) come through with rain so hopefully we won’t get rained out.

I will try to take some photos to share — all the ones I found online are copyrighted so I guess I will just have to do it myself.  Like they say — if you want something done right, yada yada yada….