There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that creeps up on us in the second half of life. It’s not always the bone-tired fatigue of young motherhood or the frantic pace of building a career. It’s something quieter—a slow leak of energy that happens when we’ve spent decades pouring ourselves out for everyone else while our own cup sat gathering dust on a shelf we couldn’t quite reach.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what self-care actually means for women like us. Not the bubble bath and face mask version that fills Instagram feeds, though there’s nothing wrong with those things. I’m talking about the deeper kind—the practices that slowly, gently help us remember who we were before we became everyone’s everything.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: the most powerful self-care practices aren’t complicated. They don’t require expensive retreats or hours of free time we don’t have. They’re simple. Almost deceptively so. But simple doesn’t mean insignificant.

Five Simple Self-Care Practices That Actually Feel Like Care

The Morning Pause

Before your feet hit the floor, before you check your phone, before you start running through the mental checklist of everything that needs doing—there’s a small window of time that belongs entirely to you. Most of us rush right past it without even noticing it’s there.

I’m not talking about a formal meditation practice, though if that calls to you, wonderful. I’m talking about something far simpler: just staying still for a few moments. Noticing your breath. Feeling the weight of your body in the bed. Acknowledging that you’re here, you’re alive, and this day hasn’t been written yet.

What happens in those quiet moments before we engage with the world matters more than we realize. When we start the day by immediately responding to demands—even the silent ones from our phones—we’re training ourselves that our needs come last. But when we pause, even briefly, we’re telling ourselves something different: You matter. Your presence matters. This moment is yours.

Some mornings, my pause lasts thirty seconds. Other mornings, I lie there for five minutes, just breathing. There’s no right way to do this. The only thing that matters is that you give yourself permission to not immediately spring into action.

Moving Your Body—But Not the Way You Think

We’ve been told our whole lives that exercise needs to look a certain way. Gym memberships. Workout clothes. Pushing through discomfort. No pain, no gain.

But here’s what I’ve learned: our bodies at this stage of life are asking for something different. They’re asking for movement that feels like kindness, not punishment.

This might mean a walk around the block at whatever pace feels good that day. It might mean stretching in the morning sun streaming through your window. It might mean dancing in your kitchen to a song you loved when you were twenty-two. It might mean gentle yoga or swimming or simply walking up and down your stairs a few extra times.

The practice isn’t about burning calories or achieving a certain heart rate. It’s about staying in conversation with your body. It’s about moving not to change how you look, but to honor the miracle of a body that has carried you through every single day of your life.

When we approach movement this way, something shifts. We stop dreading it and start craving it—not the intensity, but the connection. Our bodies remember that they were made to move, and they thank us for remembering too.

The Art of the Deliberate Rest

There’s a difference between collapsing from exhaustion and choosing to rest. One happens to us; the other we give ourselves.

So many of us have been conditioned to view rest as laziness, as something we haven’t earned, as time we’re stealing from more important things. But deliberate rest—rest we choose on purpose, without guilt—is one of the most radical acts of self-care we can practice.

This might look like sitting on your porch with a cup of tea, doing absolutely nothing productive. It might mean taking a Sunday afternoon nap without setting an alarm. It might mean saying no to plans because you recognize that what you need most is an evening alone with a good book.

The key word here is deliberate. You’re not collapsing because you have no choice. You’re choosing rest because you understand, finally, that you deserve it. That rest isn’t a reward for productivity—it’s a basic human need you’ve been denying yourself for far too long.

When I first started practicing deliberate rest, I felt anxious. My mind kept generating lists of things I should be doing instead. But over time, something beautiful happened: I started to actually enjoy the stillness. The guilt faded. And I discovered that I was more present, more patient, and more creative after I’d given myself permission to simply be.

Feeding Yourself Like Someone You Love

If your best friend came to visit, you wouldn’t hand her a granola bar and call it dinner. You wouldn’t skip making her lunch because you were too busy. You wouldn’t tell her she didn’t deserve to sit down and enjoy a real meal.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

There’s a particular kind of neglect that happens when we’re always caring for others. We forget to eat until we’re starving. We stand at the kitchen counter shoveling food into our mouths without tasting it. We tell ourselves we’ll have a proper meal later, and later never comes.

But preparing food for yourself—real food, eaten sitting down, maybe even on a nice plate—is an act of love. It doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple sandwich made with care, a bowl of soup heated up and eaten at the table instead of over the sink, a piece of fruit you actually take the time to enjoy.

This practice isn’t about nutrition rules or diets. It’s about treating yourself with the same thoughtfulness you’d extend to anyone else you love. It’s about recognizing that your body deserves nourishment and your spirit deserves the ritual of a real meal.

The Nightly Untethering

Our evenings have become cluttered with screens and scrolling, with the endless consumption of news and content and other people’s lives. We fall asleep with our minds full of everyone else’s business and wake up the next morning without ever having created space for our own thoughts.

The practice of untethering in the evening is about creating a buffer between the noise of the world and the quiet of sleep. It’s about claiming the last hour of your day for yourself.

This might mean putting your phone in another room after a certain time. It might mean journaling for a few minutes, emptying your thoughts onto paper so they don’t follow you into your dreams. It might mean a simple skincare routine that feels less like maintenance and more like ritual. It might mean reading a few pages of something that feeds your soul.

What matters isn’t the specific activity but the intention behind it: This time is mine. I am releasing the day. I am returning to myself.

When we untether from the demands and distractions in the evening, we sleep differently. We dream differently. We wake up with something we’d almost forgotten we could have—a sense of spaciousness, of possibility, of peace.

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These five practices won’t revolutionize your life overnight. They’re not meant to. What they offer is something quieter and, in many ways, more profound: a daily reminder that you exist, that you matter, and that caring for yourself isn’t selfish—it’s necessary.

We’ve spent so much of our lives tending to others. That wasn’t wrong; love often asks us to give. But somewhere along the way, many of us forgot to include ourselves in the circle of our own care.

These practices are an invitation to remember. To come home to yourself, one small choice at a time. To discover that self-care isn’t about adding more to your list—it’s about finally putting yourself on it.

And you, dear one, have always belonged there.

Be Blessed!

 

 

 

 

Photo by Brandy Kennedy on Unsplash