Small Luxuries: Lessons in Joy from Auntie Myrna

June 20, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

I think one of the ways people leave an impact on each other is by what they teach each other, directly or indirectly.

For the past 7 years, I was a part-time home care provider for my elderly aunt, Myrna. I initially went over to her house three times a week to help with cooking, laundry, grocery shopping during the pandemic (and during her home hospice care), cleaning, including weekly things like vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, and miscellaneous things like removing spots from the carpet, vacuuming her car (including the trunk sometimes!), cleaning the induction stove, and wiping down the kitchen drawers and cabinets.

During her 8-month home hospice care, I was there four days a week to support her. She passed away on May 2, 2024 with her daughter by her side.

During the 7 years of supporting her, I learned through observation three little things from her, which I’d like to share with you today.

1. High standards of cleanliness
2. Not people-pleasing, but rather, telling the truth
3. Small luxuries

High standards of cleanliness

When I lived by myself in NYC, it was the first time I lived on my own without housemates. I only cleaned when I knew I was having guests over. After supporting Auntie Myrna with her various cleaning requests, I started to incorporate some of her standards into my own life. Now that I have my own place again, I clean it every other Sunday by dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning the kitchen and bathroom areas. It’s not weekly, like she would have, but for me it’s enough – and more than I used to do.

So now if people come over, my place is naturally clean, without me having to scramble to do a deep clean at the last minute. I’ve deemed this as a way to take care of myself, not just as another chore to do. I feel good navigating a clean space and I understand why that was important to Auntie Myrna too. There’s a sense of care, pride, self-respect, and well-being when your space is the way you want it to be.

Not people-pleasing, but rather, telling the truth

I think as women, many of us feel challenged with telling the truth. Instead, we sugar coat things or people-please. In my life coaching practice, I call people-pleasing LYING. Because when we’re people-pleasing, we’re usually lying to ourselves and others about what we SAY we want to do. We might say “yes” to something or someone when we really want to say “no”.

I noticed that Auntie Myrna had NO big qualms about telling the truth and not people-pleasing. And sometimes this could feel challenging, but she could also be relied upon for a straightforward.

As an example, sometimes when I went over to her place, she’d greet me with, “You look pale today.” Initially, I would feel a twinge of criticism, but then I would think to myself, “DO I look pale today? I wonder why?” And then I’d check in with myself and how I was feeling, as it might have been a sign that I could be taking better care of myself that day. I know her intention was to show care and concern about my health through that observation, by not keeping it to herself but speaking it out loud, and I felt seen. I also noticed that with her friends and other relatives, she was similarly forthright.

Small luxuries

Sometimes when I went over to her house, I’d see an empty milkshake cup or other empty treat container in the sink. I knew that day, Auntie Myrna had gone somewhere and treated herself to something sweet – and maybe a little decadent. She was lucky that she didn’t have to worry about her diet and what she ate those last few years. She let herself enjoy those types of treats, along with root beers, ginger beers, other fizzy drinks, a variety of fruit juices that she’d cycle through, and various ice cream flavors. She never went overboard – I think she knew “everything in moderation” but it was nice to see someone treating themselves to something.

So often in my life coaching practice, women don’t know how to give to themselves because they’re always giving to and doing for others and they forget themselves. Or if they remember to give to themselves, it comes with a feeling of guilt, like they’re doing something wrong or undeserved. But when we’re doing something in joy, there IS no room for guilt. Auntie Myrna didn’t forget herself in this respect – she knew when to allow a small luxury for herself. And it’s always refreshing for me to see women of a certain generation doing this for themselves. I hope more women at any age would.

One of the questions that I learned early on in my holistic life coaching certification program was to ask, “What brings me joy?” At first, and similar to other women that I’ve talked to, I didn’t know how to answer that question because I was too busy focusing on doing things for others, like many women are. Over time, I learned to answer that question for myself; the answers to that question became ways to show myself care. So seeing that Auntie Myrna also knew how to answer that question, “What brings me joy?” helped me reinforce that for myself.

I can see that Auntie Myrna did certain things because they brought her joy, not necessarily to contribute to someone else, but purely for herself. And sometimes, that’s what we need most – something only for ourselves.

So thank you, Auntie Myrna, for these little lessons, and thank you for your life.

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What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Joy vs. Buffering

March 21, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

What’s the difference?

Last week we talked about doing things that bring us more joy. And I mentioned that this week we’ll look at the difference between doing things that bring us joy and engaging in behaviors that have a net negative consequence or that are self-sabotaging.

So, what is buffering? Buffering means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel.

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions. When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally.

The actions might look like we are doing things that bring us joy, like getting a sweet treat, having a nice glass of wine, or purchasing a small gift for ourselves. When we are experiencing joy, there’s a peaceful, easy, celebratory feel to it.

The difference with buffering is that we are likely OVER-doing something and feel out of control with it, like overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, or over-exercising. It could be anything, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from feeling an emotion.

These things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals. When we over-Instagram, we lose time that could be used in more valuable ways.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away–you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away—it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason.

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the ACTUAL cause of the pain.

When we give up our buffers, we’ll still get upset, but we’ll deal with it differently. We won’t head for the ice cream, which will just make us feel sick or regretful. We’ll deal with it by becoming aware and examining why we’re upset. Soon, we won’t even want ice cream or chips because the (false) pleasure we get from food—or whatever buffering actions we’re doing—actually diminishes, and the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and fueling ourselves increases.

Instead of using external things to change how we feel, we can use our minds to change how we feel. Or we can keep the emotion and choose to feel and process it in the moment.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be better if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, to move towards real well-being?

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What about joy?

March 14, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Know it for YOU.

One of the first ways I started to learn how to take better care of myself was through asking the question, “What brings me joy?”

I learned this question in my Holistic Life Coach certification program. And that was the first time anyone had suggested to me that this was a good question to ask myself. And to know how to answer it. In multiple ways.

In working with my clients, it’s not a surprise that some of them have no idea how to answer the questions, “What do you want?” or “What brings you joy?”

This is because they’ve been too busy letting other people have what they want, or helping others get what they want, or thinking about what others might want.

This looks like saying:

“Oh, I’ll be fine with whatever you choose.”
“I know you like pizza, so let’s get that.”
“You have great taste, so I’ll let you choose.”
“OK kids, we’ll watch the movie you want.”
“OK honey, we’ll go where you want to go.”

This is not to say that we stop being considerate or thoughtful of what others want or stop going with the flow sometimes, but rather, we can start thinking about what WE truly want, like, and enjoy. Just so we know that for ourselves.

We can still take part in and enjoy what others like AND we can learn to advocate for ourselves so others participate in what we like sometimes too. We don’t need to force them to do it and we don’t need to force ourselves to do it, if we don’t want to. And sometimes we might choose to do something that ISN’T our preference because it’s easier to do it than not to do it – it saves an argument or conflict from happening. That’s an intentional choice we make sometimes. And that’s OK, as long as it doesn’t become the default and create resentment.

When we can start knowing for ourselves what brings us joy and allow ourselves to partake in these things, we start to listen to and honor ourselves more deeply.

This is part of caring for ourselves, to let ourselves experience joy, comfort, and pleasure. Even if they are small things to start, like staying in pajamas all day, baking something, knitting/crocheting, sitting in silence in the car, watching an episode (or three) of reality TV, buying hot apple cider at the farmers market, or intentionally noticing the flowers on a walk.

Next week we’ll look at the difference between doing things that bring us joy and engaging in behaviors that have a net negative consequence or that are self-sabotaging. (Think: getting an ice cream cone because it brings you joy when you are actively working on reducing your sugar intake to lose weight. Which is why it’s great to have multiple ways to experience joy.)

Your turn: What kind of flowers do you like? What fabrics feel good on your skin? What colors do you enjoy wearing? What scents do you love? What soothes you? What have you been wanting to do / experience / eat / have but haven’t made the time for yourself to do / experience / eat / have that? When is the next time you can make time to do / experience / eat / have that? Make a plan to make it happen for you. When you do it, remember to thank yourself for making it happen.

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