Welcome back to my DIY beauty and well-being corner of the globe (aka, the Chattanooga Moms blog). I’m beyond excited to grant you an official invitation to letting your looks and cumbersome beauty routine go for an entire month!
The last time we spoke, I encouraged you to wash your face, every single night, come hell or high water, because you deserved a window of time to focus completely on yourself and wind down. I intentionally left out the clinical benefits of having a set skincare routine because I wanted the emphasis to be on the mental and emotional benefits you’d gain by doing so, but now I want to do an about face and encourage you to LET YOURSELF GO if that’s truly what you need at the moment.
I was blessed with landing a fast-paced, creative, but data entry heavy role at a premiere real estate agency recently, and while I’ve loved every bit of the job, making the leap from stay-at-home freelancer to weekday, in-office, nine-to-fiver has been nothing short of a mental burnout for me. Yes, I admit it, the mom that used post and vlog about nightly serum treatments and wrinkle creams hasn’t used a single serum or nighttime moisturizer in weeks. At first I was upset with myself for going against habits I truly believe in, and the guilt of not taking care of my health felt overwhelming and depressing. It wasn’t until about three weeks into my new job that I decided to throw my hands up and allow myself to feel okay about letting “myself” go and putting a majority of my beauty efforts on the back-burner.
I’m learning that giving myself permission and grace to be imperfect is NECESSARY if I want to retain some semblance of sanity given all that I have to juggle as a mother. I also realize that if I don’t give those things to myself, I’ll never get them.
Here’s what I will be doing in addition to letting myself go for the next thirty days. I encourage you to do this as well if you’re feeling like I’m preaching to the choir:
Create a Beauty and Self-Care Calendar:
If you have a Google email, you have access to a free monthly in-app calendar where you can schedule events and appointments. Pick a day within the next thirty days to review that calendar and literally create beauty appointments for yourself that you MUST keep! You’d be required to do the same if you needed to meet with your hair stylist or nail technician, so this is no different, other than the person rendering the service is you.
Say “No” to non-essential requirements, guilt be darned:
You have to take your kids to school, cook, clean, and work. It’s far from what we love to do sometimes but it’s a necessary evil of adulthood and parenthood, but saying yes to every single invite from friends and family isn’t. Just say “no;” this goes for social media too. For the next month I want you to remove yourself from a handful of Facebook groups, email newsletters, and in-person obligations that you’ve accepted or volunteered for that you honestly don’t have time or energy to fully enjoy and do so without guilt. Those that mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind you stepping back when it means taking care of YOU.
Get outside more:
The weather is warming up a bit and since we’re fortunate enough to live in a beautifully scenic city such as Chattanooga, I want to encourage you (and myself) to make an earnest effort to get out of the house more and soak up more Vitamin D (aka, sunlight). By doing so, we’ll feel less stressed, less depressed, and we’ll spend more time doing what we love, and less time on dreaded obligations.
Use that calendar and add easy-going outings like park visits and after dinner neighborhood strolls to your plans as well, and slowly but surely, you will create a daily schedule that you look forward to completing.
