Self-care should not be a second job

This year I quit a job running a harm reduction program in a homeless shelter. We went from dealing with a fight or overdose or some kid screaming, “Ya fucking bitch!” at us to, “Oh shit it’s six; we have to serve dinner.” Our to-do lists were an arm-length long and we delayed them constantly to attend to the urgent needs of young people with no family support. Sometimes we didn’t have time to pee.

PIC description: A woman in a striped shirt with curly hair looking very sad and tired. This is me after a tough day!

I am burned out and some days I think I might not have even one minute left of juice to go back to working in homelessness. I went on leave, got a part-time group facilitation job that isn’t as hard, and started therapy. I am not 100% yet, and I don’t know what it will take. I haven’t tried all the things, but I just can’t imagine yoga or forest bathing or workouts or journaling actually doing enough for my broken heart and altered brain. Maybe it’s just my level of burnout, but it feels like work to do these things — not just in the sense that it requires effort, but that it feels like an extension of my workday. I resent that feeling, and so too often I do easy avoidance activities (Netflix) instead.

Where I have landed in thinking about this, is that self-care should not feel like a second job that you have to do…