What is required for you to live from a place of overflow? For you to be fed, full, nourished?
What would you need to feel like you had the capacity to be generous with your love and your being?
I guarantee it’s a lot more than you think or want to admit.
If you think sneaking in a hot bath on a Sunday while your husband takes the kids to the park or getting a yearly massage with a gift card your mom got you for your birthday is decadent and fulfills your need self care; I am here to say, you need to start thinking a whole hell of a lot bigger, my love.
Our bodies, minds, and souls need attention, nurturance and tending to.. consistently and with big doses of permission and approval.
We need to stop thinking about what our bare minimum needs are and start thinking about how to give ourselves so many inputs that feed us that we can’t help but feed others.
We need to be big and audacious with our self care rituals.
Women in joy in their bodies feed the world. When women are overflowing with life force the world is fed. That’s the right relationship between women and life.
Life is nourishment and nourishment is life. If you are eating the bare minimum to get by or giving yourself the bare minimum inputs in the form of rest and bodily care you will have a bare minimum life.
Maybe not externally, but internally your life force will be dwindling and starved.
Life force requires nourishment. It requires inputs so that you may offer true aligned output.
If we want a life where we feel alive, nourished, creatively fulfilled, where our kids have a mother that is happy and present, where our husbands are sexually satisfied and also well nourished, we better make sure we are full to the brim with life force.
Because we are the faucets that the nutrients of Life pour out of.
Too many women feel like their needs need to come last.
Too many women feel their bodies are a burden. That they need to control themselves lest they let their unruly appetites turn them into a woman who has “let herself go.”
We need a world where more women have done exactly that.. let themselves go and be full and fed and nourished.
A world where women claim their needs with bold rightness and go above and far, far beyond the bare minimum for themselves.
I have been on a journey of giving myself more than the bare minimum for many years.
As an entrepreneur in the wellness industry I saw the women I looked up to and heard them talk about their weekly self care rituals. I was floored by the amounts of time and money they spent on themselves.
One of my early mentors told me, “My weekly massage is where I make the most money,” and, “the moments I sit in silence with nothing to do are the most valuable to my business.”
What she meant was that the massage and space was where her best ideas came to her. It was where she filled herself up so that she could continue to hold what she held (which was a multi 7 figure business and huge team).
And so, about 8 years ago now, I wrote out what I thought was an almost unimaginable goal of having a massage once a month, a yoga class weekly, and one full day a month that I took completely off work and just did whatever I wanted to do.
This was a BIG financial and time investment in myself at the time. It stretched me wide.
But I did it. And each year I added more to this list of inputs. I started building a team of body workers and practitioners that knew me and my body. I started to see how these investments in myself actually opened me to receive more in all facets of my life.
I saw how focusing on being nourished meant even more nourishment could come in.
I saw how giving myself these seemingly “extravagant” things created more space in my container. They were literally investments in ME.
Now, I have so much pure permission for self care. I take incredible care of my body. I eat 3 square balanced meals a day plus snacks and always, always take a lunch break.
Every two weeks I get a massage, have acupuncture, a chiropractic visit, Rolfing work and a cranial sacral and energy clearing session. This is my minimum. Sometimes I go every week if I’m having an issue.
I get a facial quarterly and go to as many yoga classes as I feasibly can with my schedule. I do daily pussy practice, morning sun light, journaling, walks, workouts and dancing. Lots of salt baths and skin care. I do castor oil packs multiple times a month, vaginal steaming before and after my bleed. I have an osteopath I go to a couple times a year as well as a naturopath that knows my health history and I can come to with questions or for insights.
This doesn’t even include my counsel of coaches, friends, support systems that I touch in with multiple times a week. My husband and I go on 24 hours trips alone to hotels and have beautiful fancy dinners together once every couple months.
I give myself so much support. And I receive it all wholeheartedly. And true nourishment requires both; the giving and the receiving.
I really let myself HAVE it. I go into my sessions with my body care team and I let myself open and receive their love, touch, and wisdom. I am very particular who I hire and all the people I work with respect me.
This is not a “oh look at me and look at how lucky I am.” No, this is the result of 8 years of slowly building this level of nourishment into my life. I can fully receive it now. The average person could not actually stay present with all that self care, even if they did have the appointments.
It started with that monthly massage which was all I could receive at the time.
There is no fully nourished woman that doesn’t have the same level of commitment to her nourishment as you see here.
It doesn’t mean she necessarily does all the sessions and body work, but she may nourish herself deeply in other ways. Her nourishment is the top priority.
Nourishment is going to be fully bio-individual. I personally love the bougie, spa experiences, maybe that isn’t your jam and you would prefer to have hours on the beach each week or singing lessons or a new watercolor set.
The amount of money spent isn’t important, the investment in yourself and joy is.
When my clients really start to get a taste of what it would mean to be the fully nourished version of themselves they comment about what an insane amount of attention it will take. And there is this moment of “why do I need so much more than everyone else?” There is this comparison that comes in.
I feel it too. Part of what is so confronting about writing this and letting the true level of support I have in my life be seen out in the open is that I don’t want to feel like I need so much more than most people could ever imagine having or giving to themselves.
But that right there is the little virus that I want to kill off right here and now: what it takes for you to be full cannot be subject to comparison.
We are not in some competition of who can take up the least amount of space and have the least need is the winner. Or vice versa: who can spend the most money at self care doesn’t win anything if they aren’t actually being nourished by it.
We actually don’t need to compete with each other at all. When women are full there actually isn’t any comparison and competition at all. Feeling that way is a sure fire sign that you’re not fully nourished.
That is the old story that has kept women starved, brittle, and constantly about to snap at their children, their partners, and feeling void of joy.
That is bare minimum thinking and I am interested in the world of overflow thinking. The world where women are so full of themselves that it spills over and feeds everyone around them. A world where women are juicy and fed and capable of savoring every centimeter of their lives.
Your needs are not a burden.
Your needs are yours to tend and meet and go beyond.
You can want more for yourself.
You can have big, audacious desires and I know that the only way for you to really meet those are through filling yourself up to the very brim with love, support, care, and attention.
If you are ready for a big fat dose of having-ness expansion. If you are ready to give yourself something that will nourish you down to your bone marrow; SAVOR is the place for you.
A retreat over the spring equinox (March 19-22) at Sage Lodge in Pray, MT with me curating the food, the conversation, and offering self care practices and contemplations that will leave you with a blue print of your most full and nourished self.
Send me a message to get on a call to talk about your desire for something like this.
Your Full Nourishment Requires More than You Think