I have been hugely inspired by Anna Mathur recently (@annamathur, go follow her!) She has written a couple of books: Mind Over Mother, which I’ve read, and Know Your Worth, which I’ve not read but I’m looking forward to reading.

How have I been inspired by her? By her radical, trail-blaizing, world-changing concept of… Looking after yourself. Particularly as a mum. Paying attention to your needs and how those needs are/aren’t being met. How does this look? For me, it’s looked like booking the eye test I got a reminder for instead of putting it off because it meant being away from the girls for all of half an hour. It looked like admitting to my mum that I was feeling overwhelmed and explicitly asking her to take a huge load of washing to a launderette so it could be cleaned and dried that day. At the moment, it’s looking like doing #onetinything (a hashtag started by Mathur), choosing a tiny way to show yourself care every day for a week then adding a new way every week (importantly you don’t stop doing the first thing!) For me this week, it’s setting myself 30 minute limits on my social media apps and NOT overriding them… I also love writing and find it so energising to have a creative output so I’m hopefully going to squeeze in more writing.

All this is done with the expectation that I will then have more energy and more resources to give out to my family, of course. But it’s also done because I deserve to not be scraping from the bottom of the barrel. I deserve help, I deserve to enjoy being a mum. And so do you! You deserve having your needs met because you are worthy of love and care JUST AS MUCH AS YOUR KIDS ARE.

The end. How are you going to look after yourself this week?