8 Self-Care Practices Helping Me Survive 2020

The control I had at the start of this year was stolen from me. More like repossessed, frankly. If I knew that control was a loan, I wouldn’t have grown so comfortable with it in my possession. About 5 months into this year I found myself with very little; barely a thought nor idea and damn sure no plan. Little to no inspiration and hardly any motivation when I do. All of a sudden I, like most of the world, were stripped of life as we knew it at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. What do I have now? I was in a whirlwind; spun. What do I really have the power to control on this earth? The imposed theme of this year for me has been “control.” To relinquish it and also how to regain it in small ways. How do I ground myself when I feel abruptly thrust into a completely different reality? Well, these simple self-care practices have been helping me do just that. They’ve unbeknown to me, rescued me from falling deep into a dark place when I reached a point of powerlessness.

In true Sagittarius fashion, I sought refuge in distraction. Chloe x Halle, City Girls, Lightskin Keisha, and the rest of the girls blasting through my Airpods envisioning myself in a chic thotfit, aggressively rapping and pointing like JT’s stunt double— enjoying a summer night out with my friends. Doing my makeup for absolutely no other reason than needing to feel like myself again, a baddie with a coin to get to. Losing days to movie marathons and binging televisions shows when I’m exhausted from this reality and want to partake in a new one, and napping when both become too bleak. I’ve been needing and receiving, constant reminders that it’s okay to want to ignore everything happening in the world because of its heaviness. It’s okay to seek temporary refuge and escape from the traumatic reality of the outside world as it is right now. In fact, it’s needed to maintain balance. As long as I snap back to reality long enough to process what’s happening, escaping for a while is okay.

Yep. Sometimes I just have to sit in it. At first, it felt beyond my control, but a few depression episodes later, I started to see I benefited from wallowing in my emotions, so I began allowing them to last a little longer. I didn’t rush to find a silver lining or pull myself out of a “funk” because it doesn’t feel good or because it’s what I should do. Instead, I just feel. Giving myself grace and validation to feel exactly how I feel. I should not be ashamed or embarrassed by feeling lost, uncertain, insignificant, unmotivated, and every other thing under the moon brought on by the state of the world and my personal life. In fact, it would be worse to act as if I was unscathed. To ignore these emotions would be ignoring my own humanity. To not feel deep intense waves of sadness and pessimism while the world is turning inside out and will never be the way I’ve grown accustomed to, would be highly alarming. So when I feel a spell looming, I welcome it. Because now I see it as a part of me, instead of something I have to rid myself of. And if it’s a part of me, it’s important, worth accepting, and worth exploring.

Most of the time, because I often feel a burden to others and don’t want to feel in need of one’s sympathy, I chose not to delve deep into how I’m feeling. And sometimes, I’m unable to put words to certain feelings. Despite this, I’ve been being honest about whatever I may have been feeling and it’s felt amazing. Describing in whatever way I can that there’s something, even if I didn’t know what at the time, wrong, or not copasetic as usual. That there was something holding me back or leaving me incapable of reciprocating the text messages or facetime calls of my friends. Often times, simply letting someone know you aren’t okay helps, even if you leave it there. It relinquishes you from the burden of having to fake happiness. And it allows you the grace of being your authentic self, and have someone shed love onto you. And that’s what we all need at the very end of the day.

My saving grace. My, recycle bin. Journaling either in a book or the notes phone app is essential to alleviating stress, in my opinion. Especially for an over-thinker, a daydreamer, or someone with anxiety, whose mind is always racing, like myself. The BIG 3. When it’s time to deal with the clutter, I take to my journal to sort through all of the stress and trauma I’ve been worrying over, analyzing, and projecting. To either rid my mind of it completely or transfer it somewhere with more space where I can explore deeper. Afterward, I always feel calmer, weightless, and everything just makes more sense.

Every day, I was filling my mind with other people’s thoughts and opinions. Back and forth between Twitter and Instagram, consuming so much. Eventually, my mind felt like white noise on a television screen. I was in a trance scrolling. I’d reached a point where I wasn’t generating my own independent thoughts. I didn’t have the time to do so. How could I? Refreshing a Twitter timeline depending on how many accounts you follow and how active those accounts are, it could be 30+ tweets loading in seconds. You can’t think and read at the same time, just as you can’t listen and speak at the same time. Two opposing functions can’t operate simultaneously. And I’m reading EVERYTHING. Interwoven with my mind’s dwindling capacity to the excessive input, is the issue that 90 percent of the tweets circulating have unhealthy tones or messages. I was subconsciously filling my mind with the stress, anger, frustration, fear, worry, grief, and heaviness of others, on top of my own. Seeing death on a regular basis. All of it became emotionally and mentally depreciating. I was filled with heightened anxiety and deep sadness because of this, so I had to retreat. Whenever I felt the wave coming I had to delete both apps and run back to the calm comfort of isolation and stillness within my mind undisturbed.

During my breaks from social media, if I wasn’t trying to escape, I opted for replacing the social media input with healthier input to keep me plugged in. Understanding our history is understanding ourselves. After the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor when protests began across the world demanding justice for them and countless other Black lives lost at the hands of those intended to “protect and serve”, I felt everything: anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, etc. I had trouble with both sleeping and being awake. I felt so lost. These tragedies, unfortunately, aren’t new and while it’s a shame that we have to endure and fight until this day, we have our elders and leaders past and present, to look towards for some answers. Watching speeches and conversations from past leaders, activists, and contributors to the Black rights movements, like Malcolm X, Sistah Soulja, Angela Davis, Nina Simone, + more, alleviated much of my worry and grounded me tremendously. It comforted me to gauge how my ancestors possibly weathered this hurricane emotionally. I saw that it was, as I’d already known, strength, determination, hope, and unity. It was the reassurance and guidance that I desperately needed and need often.

Who would’ve thought banana bread would change my life like this!? Did y’all know cooking was so transformative? Why wasn’t I told this before?! Since that first dish (that came out delectable) I’ve felt more control over my life. In the midst of a worldwide quarantine where restaurants were out of business, I can have whatever it is that I want if I cook it myself! How freeing is that?! Are we all laughing collectively at my tardiness to this party? I feel like a child who's just learned to ride a bike and has discovered newfound independence. All of the restaurants I was missing, I don’t really need. I may never leave my house ever again post ‘Rona. Cooking the small dishes I have, has been one of the main highlights of this year for me. I find great joy in baking and cooking and would have otherwise never known. If you’ve read between the lines, yes, I live at home and my mother has been cooking the bulk of my meals my whole life. But NOW?! Now, I’m deliveredT. This part of adulting I welcome with open arms and belly.

Working out has restored the sense of accomplishment I haven’t felt in so long. It gave me a goal to work towards and allowed me the needed opportunity to reward myself for something. Serving as a much-needed reminder that I am still moving forward. Finally, I have something to look ahead to. Something SECURE to look ahead to. I now have a goal that is not only attainable but that I have the power to control whether I achieve this goal or not and can also control the progress and process to get there. This means more now than it has ever, within this year of constant uncertainty. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I’ll be a baddie there! And if that’s all I have, that’s a start. If 2020 has a zombie apocalypse in the tuck for December, at least I now have the physical strength to survive.

My self-care rituals begin at the foundation of my life. I am at my best and high functioning when I feel stable and secure within my life and my existence as a whole. I have to feel a reasonable amount of control, as if I’m the captain and that I have a say-so. I encourage everyone to sit and discover what makes for a harmonious existence for them. Pay attention to those things in your everyday life that sustain and balance you, keep you joyful, and able to persevere despite certain circumstances.