This is why your self care isnt working
Naomi Askew
She was struggling to breath because they had told her to hold her breath.
They will tell you that it’s hard.
They will tell you to take a break.
They will warn: you’ll lose yourself.
They mean well,
offering what’s in their cup—
but I saw who poisoned the source.
They say: she’ll snap.
But she can bend.
They say she’s lost herself
because she no longer looks like
the small, straight tree of her youth.
But her curves speak of knowledge,
her trunk is thick with wisdom,
and her roots—
they run deep now.
They say she needs a rest.
But motherhood is the rest.
A rest from the soulless busywork
of capitalist greed.
The return to selflessness
is the return to self.
The blessing of filling her days
with deeds that will tip
the scale in her favour.
She stopped drinking their poison.
She stopped holding her breath.
And simply…
began to breathe.