We want to help you in your self-care practice, and to keep reminding you that this is important. Keep remembering to take care of yourself, and to keep doing the best you can. We’re here for you.

This week we are talking about water time, and doing some relaxing there. (Note: unless you have an extremely cool library, this is something to do at home and bring your improved mental state back to the library!)

For the most part I anticipate all of us are taking a bath or a shower every day or two. (Not judging!) And this is a good time to do some self-care. Of course getting clean is a wonderful thing, and can feel really good. If you are like me, and do gardening or hiking or other outdoors-y things that result in getting grubby and/or sweaty, you know how nice it feels to be not that anymore.

And when you are thinking deliberate about self-care, your daily bath or shower time can be incorporated right into your practice.

As with everything we talk about in this series – make this your own. Don’t over-complicate things, unless you like that. Think about how you can use this time to relax, maybe use some thoughts from last week on meditation, or have a small burst of happiness in your day.

• Buy soap, shampoo or other accessories that smell nice to you. Smell is a very powerful sense, and good smells can be easily connected to good memories.
• Hang something on the wall, or even put up a sticker or two on the mirror – something that is cheerful, positive, and gives you that small happy feeling.
• Develop a small ritual for your bath/shower habits. If you want to say a small prayer, or a short mantra, or just tell yourself today is a new day – anything is fine. It is only for you, and only has to make sense to you.
• If you want to go all-out and repaint, buy new towels, and hang a new shower curtain – go ahead and do that. Bring in some colors and patterns you specifically like. (Obviously, when sharing with family members, try not get to too many things everyone else hates.)
• Take time to be aware of the water. Up to 60% of our bodies are water, and we are naturals in water. Just taking a moment or two to notice the whooshing of it in the shower, or the buoyancy of it in the bath, can give you a little mental lift.

Whatever you decide to do, even if you decided to do nothing, is fine. We want you to be thinking self-care, managing stress, making small increases to your daily happiness levels. How you get there is up to you; we want to help encourage you and to give you all kinds of tools to make your journey easier. We are here for you.