Recently, I finally mustered the courage to get back on the trail on my mountain bike. In October 2024, I took a hard fall. Although my symptoms have improved, I’m still navigating ongoing challenges. The more surprising and impactful realization I’ve had is how this has challenged the identities I hold so strongly. I didn’t expect how much fear I feel when these expectations are challenged and not easily accessible. I'm still learning, adapting, and practicing self-compassion and forgiveness. And I'm finding that the more I am willing to meet myself exactly where I am, the more open and compassionate I can be, not just with myself, but with others navigating their own identity shifts and losses.

How often do you consider what love actually means to you? We talk about love constantly in our society, but do we really understand what it means to love, to be loving, and to be loved?

How does that change when you consider self-love? Self-love isn't something we achieve once and check off our list. It's an active, ongoing process – a series of moment-by-moment behaviors and choices. The more I discover about self-acceptance, the more I realize it's the small acts that build into something bigger..

Last week, over the course of five nourishing and inspiring days, during the Spring Self-Care Infusion, a group of individuals gathered to explore various facets of self-care, from the foundational necessities to the more nuanced practices that all can elevate well-being. In this post, we will explore some of the key insights and takeaways from the experience.

In our individualistic, judgmental, hard-charging, win at all costs world; compassion is not well-practiced or something that I’ve seen as a priority. However, I believe when we practice it consistently, and embody it, it can give us everything we are searching and pushing so hard for. Compassion allows us to loosen the grips of fear that hold us in constant judgment, and allows us to see ourselves and others through a different lens.

Being intentional and celebrating the progress we make and embracing "The Gap and the Gain" philosophy can transform our self-care journey. On our self-care journey, it can be easy to focus on the "gap"—the goals we haven't yet reached, the habits we haven't formed, or the challenges we've yet to overcome. However, celebrating the "gain"—acknowledging our progress, big and small—is crucial for sustained well-being.

In the northern hemisphere, it is the winter solstice; a time for releasing what no longer serves, developing healthier and loving relationships with our darkness, and planting seeds to grow into our future selves - our truer selves. What if we created a new tradition for ourselves where we nourished and replenished our minds, bodies, emotions, and spirits moving into the new year inspired and empowered? We don’t have to wait for the new year to implement better habits and take care of ourselves.

By forgiving yourself, you can stop the shame and start healing, creating a more loving and deep connection with yourself and others.

Kristen Neff, a compassion researcher, explains compassion as opening our hearts to our own pain and suffering, offering understanding and kindness upon failure or mistakes, and recognizing the shared human experience. It hasn’t always been clear to me what self-compassion is because my inner critic was such a trusted voice throughout my life. With enough new information and fresh perspectives and practice, we can transform the thoughts we generate, listen to, and trust to cultivate self-compassion and love all the parts of ourselves.

Learning to nurture ourselves is essential for our well-being. Over time we can forget what being nurtured feels like, and it may even become uncomfortable to accept nurturing from others as well. So we end up in a loop of discomfort, when we nurturing the most, but are unable to give it to ourselves and we reject it from others, which turns into many other emotions including anger, sadness, resentment, fear, and loneliness. Begin to speak to yourself like you would to a small child in need of care or treat yourself how you would like someone who loves you to treat you. Look for examples of nurturing that you can replicate within yourself. By practicing nurturing and self-compassion with ourselves we can move beyond those critical and negative voices in our heads, which can cause much of our fear and darkness to dissipate.

Begin to notice your habits, especially those you drawn to do repeatedly even though you may not want to be engaging in the activity, and begin thinking about what behaviors you would rather be doing or would serve you better.

Consider adding a healthier habit around one you would like to replace, and eventually when we experiment and repeat this enough, we will replace it with that new desired habit. Remain curious with the practice, reflect often, and adjust to create success.

I’ve been trying to understand self-love for a long time. I read a lot of articles and books and have written the words myself that we each absolutely deserve love and belonging, but they continued to be just words to me. The feeling of heaviness and self-loathing wasn’t really going away.

I realize now that there is a difference between self-care and self-love and that self-love has to exist internally to really evolve.

That gloominess that was enveloping me has been replaced by a light and joyful energy, and I continued to remain curious about this occurrence, how it happened, and what could've created this change. That night, just before my inner Glenda showed up, I had finally asked a question that allowed space for a new energy and different emotions. I was stuck in a cycle of anger and fear and wasn't allowing space for compassion and joy, so when I realized my energy wasn't where I wanted it to be and questioned it, invitation and space were created to feel something different.