Bold title right? I want to get your attention so you STOP your mediocre self-care routine and START doing self-care that will actually change your life.

Self-care became “all the rage” this past decade and has included everything from refusing to work past a 5pm work day to ‘treat yo’ self’ T-shirt wearing girls gangs who indulge in a weekend of shopping and cupcakes. 

While it has become over commercialized and trivialized, overall I believe the movement is long overdue in our modern era where women are expected to do more work for less compensation. The Self-Care Movement forced women to begin rebuilding boundaries to protect ourselves from those that would drain us dry and then peer over our dead bodies and still say we “didn’t do enough.”

However, I believe that the pendulum swung in to an unproductive trajectory when the commercialization of self-care began. In line the American consumerist, individualist culture, this new media message made us believe that that ‘self-care’ was buying things and retreating from people. 

And then we wonder why we still feel so tired and not enough even after buying those $5 jelly face masks or spending $80 on a massage.