Small care

Tiny Tortoise #4: Minuscule acts of care that nourish you from the inside

This cherry blossom across the road always blooms super early but it still makes me feel like spring is around the corner

Hello mates! I know I was technically back in your inboxes last week with the monthly podcast episode, but I don’t feel like I properly said hello. So, hello! I hope you’re doing okay? I hope your summer/winter is treating you well?

My time away was lovely, and while my health was not as good as I had hoped (frustratingly, I’m still in a bit of a dip) I had lots of restorative time, time with family, time in the sunshine and, yes, time in the ocean. I swam five days in a row in the chilly (read: life-affirming) waters of the Illawarra coast and it was glorious.

I love the rhythm I’ve found for The Tortoise this year, where I step back from posting every school holidays. It allows me to be both intentional and sustainable with my writing and offers the periods of rest I need. I also like that, in my head at least, it gives some structure to writing and publishing these letters. I think it would feel like a never-ending project if I didn’t have that ten-week framework to work around.

I also really like that each term has been loosely focused on a slow-living-ish theme. Last term was mostly about practical ways to practise slow living, and I want to spend this term focusing on the broad topic of self-care.

If you’ve read my 2021 book, Care: The Radical Art of Taking Time, you know I have some very pointed thoughts on the difference between true self-care and the commercialised version we’re currently being sold. And to be honest, it really grinds my gears that self-care has been bastardised so much.

There are so many of us walking around feeling burnt out and heartsick and unsure of what to do about it — stuck between desperately needing care and uncertainty of how to get it because of time/money/capacity/accessibility constraints.

So, over the next couple of months many of my letters here on The Tortoise will have more of a self-care theme, viewed through the lens of slowness. That is, redefining what self-care can actually be and how we can harness it in a way that is nourishing. Because I think we all need some nourishing.

If you’re new here (hello! welcome!) and think this might be something you’d be interested in, please feel free to subscribe to The Tortoise. Everyone receives a weekly(ish) letter on Thursdays, a monthly episode of the plodcast and semi-regular Tiny Tortoise posts such as this. Paying subscribers also receive additional, more personal posts and audio recordings.

Wattle season is here!

Anyway! With all that in mind, it’s time for another Tiny Tortoise — the semi-regular letter where I share a small, slow change/experiment/tool you might like to try.

For this Tiny Tortoise, I want to introduce you to the idea of Small Care.

What does Small Care look like?

From Care:

…we each have a personal spectrum of caring. It's not used to rank things as more or less worthy of our care, but to identify the different kinds of care that exist in our lives. On one end is Big Care: those expansive, global issues such as politics and environmental crises. On the other is self-care: our physical and mental health, mindfulness and self-talk.

Both ends of the spectrum - as well as all the things in between - are valid and crucial, but I have a theory that much of what we experience as blind outrage or numbness or bone-deep emotional exhaustion in our modern lives actually comes from an imbalance in how we care.

When we focus solely on Big Care we can become obsessive and overwhelmed, caught in a pattern of doom-scrolling and anger, and as a result lose sight of smaller, powerful, more accessible acts of care. Similarly, if we live exclusively in the realm of self-care, we risk becoming self-indulgent, sheltered and caught up in ever-shifting wellness trends without enjoying the wider benefits of community care. Living solely at either end of the spectrum can be exhausting and limiting in equal measure and will impact our health, relationships, self-esteem, families, communities and work.

Enter, Small Care.

It can be found somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and is something I discovered in 2020, totally by accident, at a time when I felt completely wrung out by the world.

I first noticed it in inconsequential actions like stopping to feel spring's first warm breeze on my face, cutting a bunch of flowers for my mum, smiling at a stranger, stargazing with my kids or picking up litter at the beach. Each tiny act was a choice to care, but to care in a way that left me feeling uplifted, buoyed somehow and part of something larger than myself. I didn't find these acts of care exhausting. I found them life-affirming.

Gradually, these small, outwardly trivial acts became a daily practice that helped me to heal, to reconnect, to find peace in a noisy world, to strengthen my relationships, to rebalance the scales in my own life, while also sending ripples of kindness into my relationships, my family, my community.

Why do it?

We shouldn’t need a specific reason to care for ourselves, but I think many of us are still caught up on the idea that self-care is selfish. Small Care is about acknowledging the constraints we have, while also acknowledging that care is powerful.

Small Care allows us to:

• push back on the idea that self-care needs to be big or expensive or capitalistic or measurable in order to be valuable

• experiment with and redefine what acts make us feel cared for, supported from within, valued and nourished

• recognise that we are worthy of care

• acknowledge that care isn’t something we need to ‘earn’

• see how caring for ourselves allows us to then care for others more effectively

How to do it?

Below is a very incomplete list of tiny acts of care. Most of them should only take a minute or two at most. At first glance they will probably seem insignificant, silly even, but all of them are little pebbles, ready to be tossed into a pond. They might be swallowed by the water with barely a wave, or they could cast ripples out into your life that you’d never expect.

Experiment with them and see which make you feel more cared for, or write your own list and keep it somewhere near for the days you need an extra dose of care or three.

• Take five deep diaphragmatic breaths when you get into bed at night

• Walk to the bus stop via a slightly different route and notice one new thing

• Unfollow or mute three social media accounts that make you feel bad about yourself

• Find a tiny little detail and spend a minute marvelling at it

• Put on your favourite song and dance around the kitchen (I have a Spotify playlist for this exact situation)

• Stretch. Roll out your neck and shoulders or do a few rounds of cat-cow on the floor

• Find a sit spot somewhere sunny or green and spend a couple of minutes paying attention to the light, sounds or smells

• Take your supplements

• Pick up a handful of rubbish while you’re at the beach or waiting for your kids to finish soccer training

• If you’re experiencing negative emotions, allow yourself to feel them for a minute or two, maybe write them down, and know they will diminish soon

• Go to bed ten minutes earlier and read or journal in bed

• Take off your shoes and walk around on the grass, dirt or sand, focusing on the sensations of your feet

• Drink a glass of water and feel it making its way down your throat, into your stomach

• Take a few minutes and sit or lay still, doing absolutely nothing

• Doodle something while you’re on the train or waiting for a Zoom meeting to start

• Write a haiku or a limerick

• Add a handful of veggies to whatever you’re eating 

• Give yourself a compliment

• Tidy up one tiny area of your room, home or workspace

• Open the windows

• Sit in the sunshine for a couple of minutes, eyes closed, and feel the warmth of it on your face

• Call or text someone you love, just ‘cause

• Make a list of three things you’re grateful for

• Take an extra thirty seconds when washing your face (with honey maybe?) and focus on the sensation of your fingers on your face. Maybe give your jaw muscles a quick massage while you’re at it

• Celebrate your current superpower — mine is lighting our fire without fire lighters

Self-care is such an individual thing. I’d love to know if any of these resonate with you, or if you have your own tiny acts of care that you come back to time and time again. I’m writing my own list and would love to hear yours!

Until next time,
Brooke xx

PS. If you think you know someone who might benefit from this list, please feel free to share this post with them or hit the love heart — it helps get The Tortoise in front of more people. And the more of us slowing down and caring, well, the better the world will be, I reckon. 💚