Self-Care When You Don’t Have Time for It
This week has been a lot.
My elderly father fell and broke his hip. Given his age, it was particularly scary. He is resilient, and I knew he would move forward with whatever came next—surgery, recovery, and physical therapy in a rehabilitation center.
Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to watch him process what had happened.
I asked him how he was feeling, and he said one word: “Disappointed.”
When I asked what disappointed him the most, his answer was simple: “The interruption in my life.”
That stayed with me.
For him, this isn’t just a broken hip. It’s a setback. It’s the realization that recovery may look different this time. The doctors have told him he will likely need to rely on a cane. For someone who has always valued his independence, that’s difficult to hear. For the first time in his life, he can’t simply assume that he’ll bounce back and return to life exactly as it was before.
Throughout his hospital stay, his frustration was obvious. He had very little patience with the hospital staff, and at times, he wasn’t particularly nice to them.
But underneath the frustration, I could see the disappointment. The fear. The grief that comes with realizing that your independence and mobility may be changing.
And my empathy went into overdrive.
I felt sad for him. I worried about what his recovery would look like. I thought about the changes ahead and what they might mean for his quality of life.
But there was another layer to this week that I wasn’t fully prepared for.
My father was being cared for in the same hospital where my mother received much of her cancer care, and where, almost 26 years ago, she asked me for permission to die.
There had been so many visits to that hospital during her illness. So many times making that same drive and walking that same route to her room. I hadn’t consciously thought about the details in years, but as I returned to visit my father, I realized how deeply familiar they still were.
Driving toward the hospital. Turning right into the parking garage. Finding a space. Walking through the doors and over the bridge into the hospital.
Past the lobby.
Down the hallway.
A left. A right. Another left.
Push the elevator button.
Number 3. Third floor.
The doors open and there’s the nurses’ station in the center. Walk around it.
And there was Mom’s room.
Now, Dad’s room.
It was almost unsettling how automatic it felt. More than two decades had passed, but I didn’t need to think about where I was going. My feet seemed to know the way.
All those visits during my mother’s cancer treatment had made this route part of my memory. And now, each visit with my father meant retracing a path that belonged to a very different time in my life—a time filled with fear, hope, uncertainty, and eventually profound loss.
And then there was the walk back.
Back around the nurses’ station. Down the elevator. Through the hallways. Past the lobby. Across the bridge. Through the doors and toward the parking garage.
It’s a long walk.
Long enough to begin processing all of the emotions I’d held in while I was sitting with my father.
But it wasn’t just my father I was processing.
Every trip through those hallways brought pieces of my mother back with me, too. The many visits during her cancer treatment. The uncertainty. The hope. The fear. And eventually, the day she asked me if it was okay to stop fighting.
So on that long walk back to the car, I was carrying both of them.
I was worried about my dad and what this injury might mean for the life he loves and the independence he values so much. At the same time, I was remembering my mom and a loss that happened nearly 26 years ago but suddenly didn’t feel quite so far away.
There was plenty of time on that walk for all of it to catch up with me—the feelings I had held in during the visit, the memories I hadn’t expected to revisit, and the strange experience of being a daughter walking those same hospital hallways all these years later.
By the time I reached my car, I was often fighting back tears.
There are times when we don’t realize how much we’re carrying because we’re too busy carrying it.
And sometimes what we’re carrying isn’t only what happened today. It’s everything that today’s experience unexpectedly brings back with it.
At the same time, the rest of life didn’t stop.
I was juggling work. I’m still trying to unpack a house we moved into three months ago. There is a house full of pets that still needs to be cared for. And I’ve been dealing with chronic physical pain as a side effect of medications I’ve been prescribed.
Somewhere in all of that, I realized I needed to give myself permission to take care of myself, too.
On Thursday, I decided to try something new: a medical massage.
Earlier this year, I went through physical therapy and learned how much targeted massage and specific exercises could help improve my range of motion and mobility. So when I stumbled across a local place offering “medical massage,” I was intrigued.
This wasn’t the candles-and-soft-music kind of massage designed primarily for relaxation. It was targeted. At times, it hurt—but in that strange way where the pain feels productive, like someone is finally getting to the places that have been bothering you.
And I left feeling something I hadn’t expected: hopeful.
I had found something I could do regularly that might actually help me feel better physically.
I also gave myself permission to nap. To rest more. To recognize that my body and mind were telling me they needed something from me, too.
We often think about self-care as something we do when we have time.
Maybe it’s exactly the opposite.
Maybe self-care is most important when we think we don’t have time for it.
When someone you love needs you, when work is demanding, when the house is a mess, when there are a dozen things waiting for your attention, taking an hour for yourself can feel selfish or irresponsible.
But running yourself into the ground doesn’t make you more available to the people who need you.
Taking care of yourself isn’t stepping away from your responsibilities. It’s part of how you remain capable of meeting them.
Sometimes self-care is a spa day or a vacation. But sometimes it’s a medical massage that hurts a little. Sometimes it’s a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes it’s going to physical therapy, taking a walk, going to bed early, asking for help, or simply deciding that something on your to-do list can wait.
And sometimes self-care is recognizing that what you’re carrying today may be connected to something you carried a long time ago.
Our minds and bodies don’t always separate the past from the present as neatly as we’d like them to. Sometimes a hallway is just a hallway. And sometimes a walk you’ve taken dozens of times brings you back to who you were 26 years ago.
Self-care doesn’t have to be indulgent.
Sometimes it’s simply noticing what is happening inside you and giving yourself some of the same compassion you so readily give to everyone else.
Perhaps the times when it feels hardest to make room for yourself are the times when you need that room the most.
Because taking care of yourself isn’t something you do instead of showing up for the people who need you.
It’s what allows you to keep showing up.