ISSUE 004
Last week I told you about the four years I spent looking outside myself for something my body had already said.
Here is what I do now.
But first, something I see in almost every woman I work with. And in myself.
We over-do. We over-protect. We over-care for everyone around us. And our own needs quietly slip to the bottom of the list.
It is never one big sacrifice. It is a hundred small ones. The sentence softened before you say it. The plan rearranged so nobody is inconvenienced. The mood managed at a dinner table so the evening stays pleasant for everyone else.
Nobody sees it. Nobody thanks you for it. And it runs all day.
You cannot stop all of it, and you should not want to, because some of it is love. But you do not have to do it twenty-four hours a day.
Somewhere in there, one hour has to belong to you.
Mine is the evening.
A long shower or a bath, unhurried. Then low lights, music playing quietly, and I take my time — oils, a proper massage, and a good head massage, which I would not give up for anything. It releases more than I can explain.
Then I sit. I am not doing anything useful. I go quiet and I think about what I have and who I am, and I give myself permission to be completely myself, unapologetically. Then I sleep.
That is the whole thing. It is not sophisticated. It is protected, and that is the harder part.
Twenty years ago, that hour had something else in it.
I started having a glass of wine at night to cope with all of it. And in fairness, it helped — in the short term. On the long road it did something else. My self-talk got meaner. My fears got louder. The anger I thought I was softening was being fed.
So I made a conscious decision to stop, before it became a handicap. Nobody told me to. I saw where it was going and I stopped while the choice was still mine.
I have never felt more free.
Here is the part I only understood later, once I went to the science.
Alcohol is a sedative. It is not a sleep aid. It gets you to sleep faster, and then it breaks up the second half of the night and takes away REM — the sleep where your brain works through what you are feeling.
So the wine I was drinking to handle my emotions was quietly removing the hours in which I would have processed them.
Being sedated and being rested feel the same for about an hour. By morning they are opposites.
What it costs. About an hour, most nights. The wine, which I do not miss. And the honest one — some people close to me still do not understand why I disappear at that hour.
That is the price, and I made peace with it a long time ago. If the people around me do not understand why I need my quiet, that is too bad.
One thing for today. Find the hour. Not the routine, not the oils — the hour.
Then give yourself permission to take it. That is the real work. We will move anything for anyone else, and then hesitate over one hour for ourselves.
And protect it once, out loud, in front of someone who would rather you did not.
The first time is the whole thing. After that it is just something you do.
What is only yours? Reply and tell me. I read every one myself.
Cheers to a bella vita, sempre.
Maria Antonietta
Sempre Bella · The Executive Aesthetic™
