Self-care is a practice related to healthcare that requires our ability, desire, understanding, and willingness to explore, promote, maintain, and support quality health as an imperative while preventing or coping with illness, disease, or disabilities that one may encounter in life. It’s a way of putting ourselves first and telling ourselves that we matter.

Self-care has become part of our societal lexicon. Our desire to define and establish parameters for this practice is exponentially significant. Look around and you’ll find countless references to self-care, and for good reason. 

To mount such an effort, it feels necessary to note the similarity to an athlete’s commitment to pursue and achieve the gold medal standard in an Olympic sport. It is literally a game-changer in figure skating. Yet not all of us are destined to be Olympic athletes nor win gold medals for self-care. This undoubtedly contributes to why it’s a practice we can easily stray from.