​Self-Care is Environmental-Care

The view out the back door of our Shack in the Woods in Oceana County.

You have probably been through a season or two in your life when a handful of people that you love have been stricken with one form of illness or another. I am just now consciously wrestling with such a time.  No one has been healed, and yet no one has died either. And none of it is related to Covid. Here is how I got out of balance, and how I got back in balance.
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As my body, mind, soul and spirit went out to all these loved ones in some small effort to support them, I eventually hit the wall.  Call it compassion fatigue (common in my line of work), or simply overburdened with too many life changes (check the scale), I came to realize that I was not attending to my own mission in life.  I was neglecting my own self.  I was out of balance. Too much yang and not enough yin. And, I stopped consciously working on LOVING MOTHER EARTH. No blog posting, no articles written. My core mission was set aside.
 
But now, the reset button has been pushed. Here is what I did and what I learned as I got back on track: self-care is environmental-care.  Follow me on this and see if your life’s story, during one season or another, matches mine.
 
January 6 was the first crisis, and we all shared in it. The second came from a dear friend on the 8th, and then one right after another as more family and friends faced life threatening illnesses. People near and dear to me were assaulted with grief while being thrown into one crisis-mode after another around health concerns.
 
As I’ve done many times before, I ran to the fire. How can I help? While it was never enough, I gave what I could. I’m good with this about myself.
 
Then, about 6 months later, I realized that I was drained, exhausted, empty. Still full of concern and continued attentiveness, I yet came to appreciate that I had failed to put my own oxygen mask on.  I knew better but didn’t follow my own sage advice.
 
Along the way I stopped working on my website, www.loving-mother-earth.com. Blog posts stopped.  My virtual assistant in the Philippines emailed me to check on my wellbeing. I was off my game. In a slump. In a funk. Lost my mojo.
 
So, I did some deep introspection.  Was I in the drama triangle, trying to rescue victims? Were my daily prayers, emailed to many, of any help? Or, were they just minor league efforts to express concern? Could I have done more years ago to head some of this off? Was I being responsible TO everyone, or neurotically responsible FOR them? Boundaries. Was I crossing them appropriately, or not? There was always more I could have done. Always.
 
I reached out to my wife for a Reiki treatment, and my daughter for her distant-energy-healing. Certain friends (I love that description) heard from me and extended their grace.  I began again some spiritual practices that have helped me over the years.
Then came Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer: God, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.
 
Following that was a broadcast from Krista Tippett’s ON BEING, in which this point was made: self-care is community accountability.
 
I’ve come to realize that healthy self-care is vitally important if I am to be a vital contributor to my community of family and friends.
 
I’m losing weight, putting up reasonable boundaries, accepting that some tasks will be left undone for a time, connecting more frequently with supportive friends, and pausing to slow down as more time for solitude is created by me, for me.
 
And now for the most relevant point of this story. 
 
Self-care is critically important if we are to be effective at environmental-care.
 
Go ahead and Google “climate anxiety” and you will find all sorts of articles about the associated mental health costs.  If those of us who are activists, those of us who are committed to doing something about our shared Global Environmental Emergency get burned out and bummed out, then who will be here to exercise the courage to change, the grace to accept, and the wisdom to know the difference?
 
The integration of environmentalism and spirituality, done in a balanced way, will sustain us for the long haul ahead.
 
Who will benefit from good self-care?
 
Family, friends, and MOTHER EARTH.