We get a TON of messages about what self care is and what self care isn’t. Despite all those messages (and maybe in part because of them), there was a time when I honestly found self care really confusing. In large part, this is because I was looking outside myself to answer my questions about what self care looks like.

We’re told self care is getting a pedicure, or buying ourselves a treat, or setting boundaries, or standing up for ourselves, or taking a bubble bath, or we’re told that thinking self care is pedicures and bubble baths is a “not deep” silly way to talk about self care. What I learned when I began to use journaling to really listen to myself is that self care can be a bubble bath, pedi, setting boundaries, or pretty much anything else that actually makes me feel cared for by me. Writing it out this way it seems so obvious, but this was truly lost on me for a long time.

Self care was definitely not something I was taught growing up, and I didn’t really know how to listen to myself to find out how I needed to experience care. It turns out that the self care I most needed was learning how to hear myself over the noise of ingrained coping patterns and societal messages. Journaling became my designated time to sit and listen to myself and hear about my needs and desires. As my journaling practice helped me connect more deeply with myself, I also learned to hear myself throughout the day. This made self care so much easier! Sometimes I fall into old patterns and quell my own voice and needs to accommodate someone or something else, and sometimes life is just hard and that makes self care difficult, but it is so much easier to meet my own needs now that I know what they are!

I wrote these self care journal prompts with the hope that these prompts will help you nurture your connection with yourself and learn what self care looks like for you.