For years it has been expressed about the need to be more cognizant to practice self-care. It has seemed like each time that I have intended to take time to do so, something drastic has happened whether discovering I would no longer to be able to sleep in my first apartment or something would happen with someone or something that I didn’t find quite enjoyable, it just seemed impossible to take time for self-care and actually breathe.

Then there was the fact that I always had to be engaged in something outside of my home. That was the way for most of my adult life because of having to live with my family until I was 33 in what I eventually discovered was very unhealthy for me. Living independently until this current year, I just was never really well to actually enjoy the practice of self-care to be more relaxed.

For most of my life I have always based my decisions on what my mother thought I should do. As the situation in her life in recent months has changed dramatically, I have had to learn how to make decisions based on how I am feeling and what I need to do to take care of myself. I have developed a new fondness for being aware of my feelings and processing them in a way that I know that I need to rather than reacting in a way that is not appropriate in a way that causes others to either be afraid or stigmatized because I was not able to control what I was feeling.

Granted, some things in the life of an autistic person cannot be controlled and yet things do happen. As I had additional services provided to me over time, I began to see that by being able to recognize when it becomes necessary to take a step aside in order to prevent myself from ending up in a more precarious situation that I know I need to be in, It can seem silly and selfish and even unreal to those who don’t really know what someone like myself is experiencing, but I am able to recognize more that I need to step away from situations sometimes and regroup things, especially if they involve changes that are pivotal to how life ebbs and flows for me.

I still struggle to admit that I need to take the steps necessary to Initiate the necessary self-care in order to not believe that I can maybe resolve the order in a better way than what I propose, but I  know myself best, especially when I am my best. I began to realize that when I start to experience self-care that provides a soothing experience can be so rewarding and relieving. It makes me wonder why I haven’t recognized that I need to take care of myself more often than I have been and be kinder to myself in the process.

Self-Care is certainly not a joke. It is something that can be used as a tool to get you back on track to where you need to be when you have no more energy to give or you just feel too much of the outside world. It is knowing that there should never be any shame in knowing that you need to just relax, it’s just something that can help you be able to regroup into the next thing that you need to do.