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Hello everybody,
And welcome to The Mindful Tenderfoot.
With this blog, I plan to document my journey into mindfulness, slow and intentional living, and self-care through simple ideas that I pick up around the web or through the several magazines I read. It'll be a lot of trial and error, but I feel like that part of the journey gets overlooked too often with "lifestyle blogs" and that's not good for one's self-esteem. I know it's definitely not for me as someone who feels like she has to do everything perfectly, first try. If I fail, I'm a failure. If I succeed, it's not good enough, I could have done better. Sound familiar?
As a young woman in her final year of college, I am constantly in a state of comparison. The girl across the room has better skin than me, the boy next to me in class speaks up more and has better ideas, that model who I follow in Instagram has my ideal body I'll never get to. Everything and everyone are
better, better, better.
To address the elephant in the room, I suffer from major depression and anxiety disorder. I've been treating it with medicine and counseling for years now and have dabbled in self-care practices I read about on blogs or see in YouTube videos but have never really stuck to them. I know they'll do me good, I've seen the effects they have on others, on myself when I stick to it for a week or two. But there never comes a third week. I have a bad habit of giving up when the going gets tough and honestly, that may be the case with this blog.
But here's how I'm trying to look at it: I read, watch, and listen to so much self-help material that I feel like I should be a mini pro at something like dry-brushing my worries and dead-skin away or doing my morning yoga while listening to the wind-chimes on my incense and crystal covered porch. And that's just not the case. I could keep beating myself up about not getting around to creating this ideal life for myself and going back to the self-harm that's been plaguing me for years
or
I could change it. My life. My routine. My well-being, the thing that I've been ignoring for 21 years and counting.
So this is my way to motivate myself. I've been relying on my boyfriend and my "Self-Help" journal I always keep on me to inspire me to change my life but it's not healthy to put that on someone you love so much and a journal can only do so much.
This is accountability. This is commitment. This is the next step to healing thyself.
I hope you stick around with me on this journey. I know it won't be a smooth, breezy ride; there will definitely be some bumps along the way. But that's life, you know?
-kaylin
