During the pandemic, I consumed a staple diet of skincare videos, DIY hair care tutorials, daily planning hacks and home exercises because, to be honest, I really needed it. Without a circle of friends or a community that I could engage with face-to-face, I was confronted with years of self-neglect finally catching up with me. My posture was awful from being hunched over a laptop for hours every day, my skin was dull, vacations left me feeling guilty and even a long night’s sleep did not make my exhaustion go away. I was surviving on coffee and a cycle of nightmarish deadlines because I had designed my life for optimal productivity. So, to have this time, freedom and an internet-endorsed self-care routine could not have been better for me.
I read at leisure. For pleasure, instead of work. I did breathing exercises, took slow walks and sat on my terrace with a cup of tea, just staring at the trees. I made banana bread and Dalgona coffee. I bought a gua sha and a jade roller and ran them over my face diligently. I curated a bouquet of good self-care practices that helped me deal with compassion fatigue. The pandemic had brought with it overwhelming loss: there were so many terrible happenings in the world and I somehow felt responsible for others’ mounting worries in addition to my own. When this fatigue ultimately led to burnout, I decided to focus on the only thing I could control: taking care of myself.
Then, I got pregnant. Right in the middle of the pandemic’s second wave. By this point, the amount of self-improvement videos posts and podcasts I was consuming had skyrocketed. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not have enough salads, workouts or scented candles to keep up. You can’t just sleep, there is apparently a ‘right’ way to optimise sleep; you can’t wash your face, you have to ‘cleanse’ it in a tried-and-tested manner; you can’t just eat or exercise or do any of the regular things you wanted to—if you aren’t maximising, you aren’t doing it right.
If something went awry, I felt inadequate. On days when I managed to do it all, I felt like I needed to be accomplishing more. I was exhausted and unable to keep up with the expansive self-care regimen I had set for myself. Chasing after self-care didn’t make me feel so good anymore. On some days, my inability to slather my growing belly with oil actually left me feeling incompetent when the sheer fact that there was a living, breathing baby in there should have filled me with awe. Then came postpartum—with a whole wave of hormones, exhaustion as well as a receding hairline. On those days, being able to take a warm bath was all the self-care I could manage. Not being able to snap back into shape, imperfectly filed nails and spending all my spare time trying to catch up on sleep made me feel like I had no control over myself anymore. How did self-care begin to inspire feelings of being not-quite-enough?
