Week 2: Self Care

Beyond the Bubbles

Welcome to Week 2! If one more person tells you to "just take a bubble bath," you might just lose it, right? As a therapist and a mom, I know that real self-care isn't a luxury—it's a maintenance requirement. This week we’re going to talk about the manageable, "in-the-trenches" care that actually keeps your nervous system from red-lining.

The Lesson: Real Life Restoration

Self-care isn't about escaping your life; it's about refilling your tank so you can live it. We’re focusing on "Micro-Resets"—5-minute windows where you change your sensory input, breathe, or just sit in the driveway for a second before going inside. It’s the "boring" stuff (hydration, sleep, silence) that actually saves us.

Lesson WOrksheets

Take some time to work through the following worksheets. These are tools to help you in the process of regaining your autonomy. Don't let them hang over your head or stress you out, just do them when you're ready.

The 5-Minute Reset Menu: Keep this on your fridge for high-stress moments.

The Restoration Tracker: Small wins for a calmer you.

The Guilt-Deconstructer: Challenging the unhelpful thoughts that keep us from good self care.

Your Weekly Read

This week's book is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. There's a reason this book has almost 5 starts out of more than 8,800 reviews on Amazon, and why it's a GoodReads Choice Award Nominee.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This book is a gift! I’ve been practicing their strategies, and it’s a total game changer.”—Brené Brown, PhD, author of Dare to Lead

“A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves, Burnout is essential reading [and] . . . excels in its intersectionality.”—Bustle

This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a roadmap to minimizing stress, managing emotions, and living more joyfully.

Your Weekly Pod

This week's pod is one of my absolute favorites by Glennon Doyle and her crew over at We Can Do Hard Things. It is also the podcast episode I share most frequently with clients, and I've found that it resonates deeply with almost everyone who listens to it. There is a lesson in this resonance, which is that women have an almost universal experience of being overburdened by the invisible/emotional labor required to maintain a family and home. And that, friends, is not a good thing.

OVERWHELM: Is our exhaustion a sign that we’re CareTicking time bombs?

In the episode you'll discover:

1. How the constant to-do list ticker looping in Amanda's brain makes her feel like a dormant volcano.

2. The job description we've somehow accepted for motherhood—and whether self-abandonment is a job requirement.

3. The way gender expectations even creep into Glennon and Abby's marriage.

4. How to know whether your partner is a co-builder or an assistant.

5. How to make the invisible load of caretaking visible—and potentially bearable.

Your Weekly Jam

Enjoy this playlist designed just for you!

The vibe of this week's playlist is "restorative and calm," with a goal of regulating the nervous system and slowing down.