How Do You Care for Yourself?

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How are you? Most of us say fine or good, but obviously it’s not always fine, and sometimes it’s not even that good. This is a podcast that gives people the space to be honest about how they really feel.

It’s a place to talk about life, the good, the bad, the awkward, the complicated. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking. How do you take care of yourself?

Like, really take care of yourself? I’m Nora McInerny. This is Thanks For Asking, the call-in show about what matters to you.

And today, we are taking calls from people who are going to tell me how they really take care of themselves.

Self-care is, ooh, such a buzzword, such a buzzword, and we associate it with things like, I don’t know, bubble baths, going to yoga, consumerism. Self-care has become a euphemism for buying things, right? It’s self-care.

I need a new lipstick. I’m obviously talking about and to myself in this scenario. Oh, it’s self-care.

Is self-care something that you can buy? It is something that you can do. But one of my favorite non-fiction books is this one, Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin.

She is a doctor. This is about what self-care really is, which is not bubble baths, not crystals, not knocking those because, you know, I love a bath. I love sitting in my own soup.

I love people’s soup.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Nora flavored, preferably. What?

I do love buying things, but this is about self-care as treating yourself well, treating yourself with compassion, making choices that allow you to take care of yourself, while also recognizing the fact that our world does not make this easy.

Our world, in fact, makes it very, very difficult for us to make choices that allow us to treat ourselves with care. So today’s callers are going to tell us how they actually practice self-care, what they actually do to take care of themselves.

And I’m also going to tell you a few things that that I like to do to take care of myself. The first one is a very difficult one. And it is saying…

No. No. It’s saying no.

That is a hard thing to say when you are a people pleaser.

It’s a hard thing to say when you are wired to say yes, because it might make somebody else more happy and because nothing feels as good to me as knowing that somebody else feels good, even if I feel really, really bad.

But over many, many painful years of not learning a lesson, and instead just repeating the same mistakes over and over again, I realized that one of the healthiest things that I can do for myself, one of the ways that I can actually truly take care

of myself, is to not automatically say yes to everything. So maybe it’s not an immediate no, but it is, and I’ll get back to you. Let me think about it.

Let me think about the way that this decision really affects my entire life and the other people in my life, because for many years, I said yes to a lot of things that I really had no business saying yes to, because I truly felt like if somebody was

asking me, I had an obligation to say yes. And don’t worry, I’m in therapy. I’ve been in therapy. I will probably always be in therapy because one, I just simply love it and I love my therapist.

She’s so good.

And also because that is a way that I can take care of myself, is making sure that I am moving slow, slowing down, slowing down and really, really paying attention to what I’m doing and not just blindly saying yes to every single thing.

And the second is actual connection, making sure that I’m connected to people and that I feel that connection. I make a lot of phone calls during the day. I will call my friends, like it or not, and a lot of them not.

But hearing somebody’s voice, just chit chatting, no agenda, getting back to that kind of, you know, lay on your bed, stare at the ceiling and talk on the phone for hours that we practiced in middle school and high school.

Who has the time for that anymore? None of us, but we can talk for 10 minutes. We can talk for five minutes.

It really does help me feel connected to the world. And then a third is, and this is tough, this is tough for people. It’s been tough for me almost my entire life is I sleep.

I sleep a lot and I’ve started to take sleep really, really seriously because for many years I did not. And I would say things like, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. And well, guess what?

The less you sleep, the more likely you are to just drop dead. So please, please, please go to sleep. And if you can’t go to sleep because you are so stressed, you are so anxious, go to therapy, get a medication, whatever it takes.

I’ve taken several medications, and now I’m just on some sleep gummies, some THC sleep gummies that I love. Yeah, those are my main things right now.

But I am always interested in how other people do things, what they are doing, how they are doing it. I love looking over at someone else’s paper. I’m not cheating.

I’m just observing. I’m just observing. And I love to hear from other people.

So let’s get into the phone calls. The phone lines are open. I keep playing around with this phrase.

If it’s Tuesday, we’re talking. Is anyone feeling that? Because the phone lines are open on Tuesdays.

But here we go. Self care. We’re talking about it today.

Hello, this is Sarah.

Hi, Sarah.

It’s Nora McInerny. How’s it going?

It’s going well. How are you?

Well, I’m five minutes late to call you because I was literally just in the zone, just zoning in, zoning out, all the zones.

Every single zone.

Every zone, every zone. I was just, I was just in it. But where, what was I in?

I don’t know.

We’ll find out later. We’ll find out later.

I was like, man, you know what I mean? Like you just think you are having a great day and you’re like, I’m on top of it. Then you look at a at a calendar and you’re like, what?

I’m sorry. Oh, oopsie. Oopsie, Daisy.

Good to know. Good to know. And you know what?

That’s OK. That’s OK. Here we are.

It’s totally fine.

Honestly, it’s totally fine.

Here we are. Here we are. Anyways, we did it.

We did it. We did it. Any time you can get another person on the phone in a telephone averse culture, you have achieved something huge.

And I think both of us deserve a lot of applause for that. So a full round of applause for sure. Full round.

Hopefully people are standing. Here we are. OK, we did.

We are.

We did it.

We got headphones. I dialed a number. You saw a number come across your phone.

You said, answer.

I answered an incoming call.

Yes, that’s these are not small things in the year 20, 25. These are actually huge accomplishments.

This particular week, like we get gold stars for literally everything.

For just it, just maintaining any kind of composure in the face of fill in the blank.

We are speaking full sentences and I think that we should be applauded for that.

I got out of bed. You possibly got out of bed. I don’t know where you are.

No judgment if you’re taking a call from bed, which is we should bring that back as an extremely glamorous lifestyle. It’s just, I’m taking my girls from bed, bring back day dressing gowns, like day, you know, people getting dressed to lay in bed.

It’s like the feathers. Yes, exactly.

Okay. Bring back just a bed lifestyle. That’s 2025.

I do think the young people are trying really hard.

I think they’re really pulling for that. And I applaud them for that.

They are, but they’re calling it rotting. We’re not.

Which does have some terrible connotations.

It has bad connotations. I know we are bed growing. We are bed…

So I mean, it’s just rest. No, bed rest is also…

I saw something, I think it was yesterday online, that was like, you guys, we’re not rotting. We’re fermenting. We’re bubbling.

We’re simmering. We’re making some good soup. And I’m like, all of those are so much better.

We’re making a probiotic.

We are actually…

Exactly.

We’re actually doing chemistry when we stay in bed all day.

And it’s good. It’s better for all of us.

It’s better for everybody. It’s better for everybody. I have on my vision board, I have a photo of a woman in a heart-shaped bathtub taking a telephone call and brushing her hair.

And I’m like, that’s what I want.

Oh, my gosh. Heart-shaped bathtub has just made my entire body relax. I’m like, please, please let me find a heart-shaped bathtub.

Preferably one that’s deep enough that both my shoulders and my knees can be underwater at the same time. I was about to say.

I don’t know how tall you are, but it almost doesn’t matter because all the tubs that are built into any home are like, hey, this is a tub that you could technically bathe in, but it’s like 12 inches.

This is for children, right?

You guys are only going to bathe children.

Children, small dogs, very small dogs. And maybe, like, you know, laundry in a pinch, but certainly not an entire adult human body. Definitely not.

Not a little over 5’8. No.

No, certainly not.

No, no, no, no, no. If I… Should I ever win the lottery?

You will know because I will, one, I will tell everybody right away. Two.

There will be signs, and one of the signs will be, I will tell you.

There will be an announcement. I will say, I am now extremely rich, and I would now like everybody to know that I have a bathtub that I can fit into.

And here is a list of all of the things that you will be seeing around me immediately.

And here are the material possessions. I’m going straight for a bathtub, and then I’m going for a novelty fence that I saw at a mall. That was a bunch of colored pencils.

And it was so cute and like so well done. And I just thought, that’s the kind of fence I want. And I am not joking.

I will have that fence. And that is how you will know that I have hit it big. I will get myself a novelty fence.

First of all, we love Joy.

We love whimsy. The colored pencil fence has all of these. Number two, can you imagine how easy it would be to direct people to your home, delivery folks, your friends, whoever, just like look for the colored pencil fence.

And the only one that has one, it’s Radicelle. That’s how you know you’re in the right place.

Okay, Sarah, did you grow up with like a very distinct house in your neighborhood that you could describe to people? Because we had in our neighborhood, like we called it the Hollywood House. It was Pink Stucco and it had these huge windows.

They would put like displays up for holidays, like with mannequins. And that was like the house that I was like, that house is so distinct. There’s not another Pink Stucco Hollywood House in that neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Like that was a house that had like…

Certainly not in the Central Times though, for sure.

No, no, no, no. And like, I do. That’s, that is what I want.

I want someone to be like, oh, you know, the house that has the colored pencil fence? Yeah, that Lunatech. Go to her house, take a right.

And then, and then we also had this house that was painted, like the woman who just painted it. Like it was, what a great story.

Well, no, the images that created in my brain was so clear. Like I’ve seen individual brush strokes on the side of the house, not thorough coverage.

Not thorough coverage. She just painted on it, like every, it was like, you know, the vinyl siding and every bit of, it was like one of the, one of the little side panels was flowers. And then one was hearts.

And it was nutty.

So painted like art.

That’s even better. Painted like art.

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah, and I wonder how she’s doing now because I don’t feel great about the fact that as children, we called her Scary Mary, but she did, I don’t even know if that was her name, but she did scare us a little bit, so.

So my, I am married to, I’m married, and it’s to a guy, and I am married to this guy for many reasons, and one of them that is that I was randomly matched with his younger sister to be my college roommate, which is how I got to know her and how I got

to know her family, and I was like, I like this guy, I’m gonna stick with him. So all of that is to say, she and I lived with a third girl when we were in college, who we very unkindly called Crazy Amanda.

And every time I tell that story, I have to make sure that I know, that I say to people like, I know that that’s a very unkind nickname, but it was not not earned. Yeah, that’s the thing. And so that’s where we are with that.

That’s where we are with that.

And also it’s like, you know, I’m not gonna call somebody crazy who has like a deep mental illness, right? Like I’m not gonna be like, oh, exactly.

But it’s like, and so it’s like language does have different kinds of meaning and different kinds of evolution. So like, if I call someone crazy, it means like they’re just acting crazy. Like doesn’t mean-

Words do matter and also vibes do matter.

And I expect you to be able to deal with the intersection of those.

I think that I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. And Scary Mary did scare us.

I don’t know what it was. She just was like, she was, she lived alone as far as I could tell. All the windows had been boarded over and she had painted those boards too.

So that’s kind of spooky as a kid.

She was making choices.

Yes, yes.

And she wore like, she dressed like, you know, very wacky, sexy, but like had like maybe some skin conditions that were a little bit frightening as a child to see like a woman with like lipstick all over her face and like she’s all over her body,

like rollerblading towards you. So, you know, I never was on kind of her face, you know, on rollerblades, on wheels. And yeah, so that’s what I’m saying is I will be her. That will be me.

Well, that’s what I was just thinking.

I was just thinking, I’m like, it’s so wild that like the adults who frightened us the most when we were children are the adults that we definitely want to be when we are also adults.

Like when you’re a kid, you’re like anyone who goes outside of the lines, you’re like, oh, that can’t be good. I got to stay away from that all across. And once you’re grown up and you know a little bit more, you’re just like, oh no, that’s the way.

That’s how you got to do it.

This is why I’m making this kind of podcast. Because I want you to call and just talk to me about anything now.

We can do that. I love that. Okay, I will tell I will I will start talking about the things that I decided that I would talk about when I find out for this call, which is that I take care of myself by taking the month of January off.

And when I say off, I don’t mean for my paying job, because we’re so not that lucky. But I do give myself official internal mental permission to just not do anything that I don’t want to do that month.

And like, this started around like resolutions and like not trying to do that during January.

And then it has sort of expanded to be like, do you know when you have those times that you’re like, I should eat the leftovers that are in the fridge, because those are going to go bad in like three days.

But what I want is actually just some scrambled eggs and some toast. During January, I just have the scrambled eggs and toast. Like I don’t make myself follow any rules that I don’t strictly have to during the month of January.

And that feels great.

Sarah, I mean this down to my very bones. You’re a genius. Like you quit, you’re taking a sabbatical every January from like the grind.

That is…

Absolutely.

Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Okay.

So what is like… Give me like one more example. Like someone tries to rope you into…

I don’t know. Just something annoying that you don’t want to do. You’re just like, sorry, I don’t do that in January.

I don’t know that I have phrased it to people.

So I will tell you that part of the reason that January has become the month is that there are three dates in January that hold a lot of significance for me. One of them is January 15th, which is the anniversary of my dad’s death.

One of them is January 19th, which is my birthday. One of them is January 24th, which is the anniversary of when I got diagnosed with cancer. So like that 10-day period is a lot for me personally.

Yes, that’s a lot.

Yeah.

And so most of the people in my life know about all of those. And so when I’m just like, no, not this time. I don’t have to talk about the January sabbatical because anyone who would ask me to do anything would get it.

But for example, I have chores around the house that not like daily chores, like I still got to do the dishes and all that stuff. But like, am I going to get out all of the equipment to clean the kitchen floor? Not during the ones of January.

No, no.

Am I going to worry about filing the big pile of papers on my desk?

Not for another couple of weeks.

Yeah.

I just let all sorts of piles pile up in my office.

Yeah.

And that’s cool because that room has a door that can close. And that’s fun.

And they’ll be there in February.

February 1, they’ll still be there. And then I can decide what to do with them at that point.

OK.

But it is really…

This is… I really mean that this is genius. And I hope that when people hear this, they think of like the month that is just a little bit too much for them.

And they they give themselves a month off. I love this idea so much. I would love that.

I love this. I love this. We’re calling it the Sarah sabbatical.

And you should… Everyone should take one. Everyone should take one.

I’m so excited to have something named after me.

I thought it would be… Someday, I thought it might be a sandwich, but this is even better.

Well, look, it’s not too late to have a sandwich named after you. And you’re right. It’s really not…

It’s not too late for us to paint our house however we want, get a weird fence, take a month off, get a sandwich named after you.

Or to get a fancy robe and take phone calls from bed, yeah.

Honestly, I cannot believe how much we covered in this phone call. I really can’t. This is…

We went to a place of… We talked bath tubs, bed phone calls, taking a month off. We did it all, Sarah.

I feel so good.

Scary neighborhood characters that grow up to be rad role models, yes.

Oh my God. You just made my Tuesday so wonderful. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Please, please, please, when we open up like longer bookings, I just want to shoot the shit with you. Please call back.

Okay.

I’m telling you.

I’m gonna take you at your word, Nora. No shit. Like, if you want a phone pal, you’ve got one.

I mean it.

I mean it. What reality TV do you watch?

Ooh, so I tend to favor the gentle end of the reality TV spectrum. So like Great British Bake Off, Great Pottery Throwdown. I’ll dip into a Queer Eye every so often.

Yeah, you really are in the gentle end.

Okay.

I’m very gentle. I don’t like things where people fight, which disqualifies me from a lot of reality television.

It’s true. I like high-conflict reality TV.

I understand the brain process where it’s happening over there. It’s entertaining because it’s not touching my life. I don’t want it.

I actually would prefer it not be anywhere, which is not a healthy process either, but this is where we are.

There’s probably something healthy in between there. Betwixt the two. Okay.

We will talk again. You are wonderful. Enjoy the rest of your sabbatical.

You got 10 more days left.

I have a week and a half. I’m feeling good. Nora, thank you so much.

This has been delightful.

Happy early birthday. No, late birthday. Happy early cancer anniversary.

Fuck.

You nailed it. Good job. Fucked.

Well, okay.

See you. Bye.

All right. Bye-bye. Bye.

Hello?

Hi, is this Celeste?

Yes, this is Celeste.

Hi Celeste, it’s Nora McInerny.

Hi, I can’t believe you’re calling. I tried to cancel the appointment because I know now and then I was like, oh my gosh, no, I should just answer it.

Honestly, I’m just in a state where I’m like, I have no idea how I’m keeping, how I’m taking care of myself. But now that I’m on the phone, let’s just keep the appointment.

Look, this is great because same, I’m doing my makeup while we do this because I forgot to do that today. I didn’t forget, I just could not get my shit together.

And also, I’m glad to hear that this is also something that you have not figured out because Lord knows I haven’t either. So, God, God. So generally, how’s it going?

It’s not great, but this is just a tough time of year.

But I feel like I’ve come up with some strategies over the last couple of years, but I feel like I’ve gotten better at taking care of myself. So when I saw, I don’t know how I stumbled upon the link, but I love everything you do.

So I was like, oh, I should try to sign up for something.

Okay, so what has worked for you?

So what’s worked for me is what I was thinking about when I reached out was I had a major loss. It’s actually coming up on the three year anniversary of it next week in seven days.

I was like almost six months pregnant with identical twin girls and got like a terrible diagnosis for one of them and then ended up having to terminate for medical reasons and whatever.

It’s a very sad story and I know this is like, you’re not doing the terrible things for Asking anymore.

But that’s like some back story.

No, I’m not not doing it.

But it’s because that’s everything has that, right? Like that’s the reality. Everything has that kind of back story to it.

Even a person who seems like they have like the perfect life, that everybody has this sort of like terrible origin story. Like that is a part of, I believe, all of our DNA. And you don’t have to apologize for that.

Yeah, everybody has bad things that happen.

But that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And it kind of like shook me into this new reality. Like I don’t really even remember who I was before that loss.

But what I started to do was just like, I don’t even know. I think I’m grateful that I was able to listen to myself because I think that that’s a privilege that’s hard to do given circumstances, whatever people are dealing with.

But therapy is number one. That’s how I take care of myself. I took a break from it for a while, and then I was like, okay, I need to start this again.

Because without it, I just felt like I was kind of flailing. I went on and off anxiety meds, and that’s something and it’s like, okay, well, it’s okay to admit that you need help.

And I started playing basketball, which was like the most life-changing thing for me, which I’m like not an athlete.

And my husband would just see me crying on the couch every night, and he’d say like, okay, come on, let’s get up and go outside and shoot some hoops. And I never played basketball growing up, and now it’s like my favorite pastime.

It’s my favorite way to exercise. I like put on my headphones and just play by myself in my driveway in the middle of the day.

Celeste, I love this so much. I love this so much. I love this so much for you.

I do too, honestly.

It’s been a really fun surprise in my late 30s.

Yeah, yes. Oh, isn’t it fun when no one’s like, like I also, I forgot that I like doing that alone.

It’s really fun. I listen to the same album, which is like, I don’t know if you remember Girl Talk, but it was like this weird mashup band that was popular when I was in college.

And there’s this one album that like, every time I hear it now, I’m like, oh, I gotta go start playing basketball, because it’s the only thing I ever listen to.

But it’s just been a great lesson, and also like letting go of my insecurities, you know, like feeling like concerned with what the neighbors are thinking of when I miss a shot, because I’m really actually pretty bad.

But I’ve seen myself get better over the last three years. And my husband has been like a really great coach. And now he’s coaching my five year old basketball team, the Bananas.

I love when kids get to name their own teams.

I wish I could say that they can’t name their teams, but they didn’t.

They just they were selected.

No, that’s so funny because one of my kids played like soccer very, very briefly, like we have two athletes and then two little couch boys. And they like every team in the league got to choose their name. And it was all like hot talkies, the Doritos.

It was literally all snack foods and then they kept changing it to be like, actually, we’re like the Red Hots, we’re the Franks Red Hot. Actually, we’re like, I was like, okay, condiments and snacks.

I was like, okay, that’s a good one.

Yeah. Go Doritos. Go Doritos.

This is beautiful. I love that.

Yeah. So I’ve gotten a lot better at taking care of myself. And I think that’s the silver lining of loss.

Trying to be more comfortable with understanding my own limitations and my own boundaries and people evolve and change and letting go of what no longer really serves you. What’s it really had to let go of?

Something that I’ve had to let go of friends, honestly, that were really just it was probably a friendship that has that like had reached its end point anyways.

But then after going through such a enormous loss and seeing the way people showed up for me and also the way people didn’t show up for me, it just really put things into like crystal clear perspective of like who I want to be surrounding myself

with. But it’s still you still grieve the loss of the friendship and the history, even if you know it’s the right thing. So, yeah.

Because I think there is always going to be that version of us that’s like inside that like remembers how things used to be.

Right. Yeah. Like you lose that innocence, you know, and the naivety.

And like I lost a lot of joy. You know, my son was two years old and I feel really I still grieve like the joy that that loss robbed from me over this period of time, you know.

But like you said, it’s just everybody has everybody has their shit and it’s all and you know, like I hate the comparison game. It’s all it’s all big and important.

I know. But I also like when you say like, oh, like, God, the things that it like robbed from me, that’s so that’s always been hard for me. You know, I have like a guilt over that, you know, I have guilt, I have guilt over it.

And I’m like, I think part of like trying to take care of myself is like, remembering that like, you know, I really did not know what the fuck I was doing.

Right. Nobody does.

And I might still not, you know what I mean? And I just like really like, you know, everything is, you know, you have a better perspective when you’re looking at the past, and you’re like, oh, now I can see now. This is what I should have done.

You’re like, but no, because you really had no idea.

Right. I know. I really struggle with the same thing.

And I just found a new therapist actually. And she gave me this advice, which I just have to like put on a post-it note and place it everywhere. Like accepting the feelings and get ridding, get rid of the should.

Like should doesn’t really serve anybody in any positive way.