72 Self Care Strategies

If you’re looking to add new tools to your self-care toolbox, here are 72 activities to help boost your well-being:

1. Journalabout your feelings
2. Meditatefor 10 minutes
3. Move your body
4. Spend time in nature.
5. Take a mental health day
6. Buy yourself a gift
7. Read a book
8. Practice deep breathing
9. “Digital detox,” (Take a break from social media)
10. List 5 things you’re grateful for
11. Take a drive
12. Enjoy some comfort food
13. Dance to your favorite song
14. Get a massage
15. Take a nap
16. Listen to music
17. Take a yoga class or stretch at home
18. Go on a day trip
19. Practice mindfulness
20. Give yourself a manicure
21. Change your scenery
22. Donate time or money to a cause that you care about
23. Repeat an affirmation
24. Reflect on an important moment in your life
25. Go out to people watch
26. Curl up with a blanket
27. Make a bucket list
28. Plan a family game night
29. Get a good night’s rest.
30. Make a scrapbook
31. Attend a class
32. Practice self-acceptance
33. Listen to an inspirational podcast
34. Make a collage of positive quotes and photos
35. Have an outdoor picnic
36. Watch the stars at night
37. Paint a picture
38. Try something new
39. Hug someone you care about
40. Go bird-watching
41. Take photos
42. Schedule a healthcare appointment
43. Join a support group
44. Have an at-home spa day
45. Go for an outdoor hike
46. Do a puzzle
47. Browse your local library or bookstore
48. Play an instrument
49. Make a smoothie
50. Listen to a guided imagery exercise
51. Write down 3 personal strengths
52. Tell another person what you admire about them
53. Do a crossword puzzle
54. Write a poem
55. Organize a drawer or room in your home
56. Face one of your fears
57. Visit an animal shelter
58. Spend time in the sun
59. Color in a coloring book
60. Say “no” to something that doesn’t serve you
61. Take yourself on a date
62. Make a dish from scratch
63. Write a letter to a friend or family member
64. Listen to an audiobook
65. Take a trip to a local museum
66. Use each of your five senses
67. Watch a sunrise or sunset
68. Make a flower arrangement
69. Explore a landmark in your neighborhood
70. Do something that you loved as a child
71. Make a vision board
72. Schedule a therapy session

The New Menopause

by Mary Claire Haver, M.D.

Menopause is inevitable, but suffering through it is not! From changes in your appearance and sleep patterns to neurological, musculoskeletal, psychological, and sexual issues, this empowering book provides a comprehensive A to Z toolkit of science-backed options for coping with symptoms and what to do to mediate the risks associated with your body’s natural drop in estrogen production, including for diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and weight gain. It also shows you how to self-advocate and prepare for wellness visits, including questions for your doctor. This is the bible of midlife wellness, arming women with the power to secure vibrant health and well-being for the rest of their lives.

Inciting Joy

By Ross Gay

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how to resist, and how joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive solidarity. In fact, joy just might even help us survive. He explores how we can practice recognizing connection, and how to expand it. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative pointing out what might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together.

Action Item: Make a Joy List!

When was the last time you thought about what brings you total joy and contentment? Sit down today and create a list of at least 10 things that make you happy. Do it now because if you know what feeds your soul, you can schedule time each week to guarantee yourself a little bit of joy.

Inheritance

by Dani Shapiro

In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history—the life she had lived—crumbled beneath her.  Inheritance is a book about secrets and about the extraordinary moment we live in where science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. Part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience, Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity.

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When the Jessamine Grows

Donna Everhart

Joetta and Ennis McBride have built a happy life for themselves, raising two sons, fifteen-year-old Henry, and eleven-year-old Robert, on their small subsistence farm in North Carolina. Amidst talk of civil war, Joetta considers her family neutral, believing this is simply not their fight, but her opinion is not favored by Joetta’s father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons’ heads with stories about the glory of battle and the Southern cause. One night Henry runs off to join the war, and Ennis leaves to bring him home. Weeks pass with no word, and Joetta is battered by the strain of running a farm with so little help. As the country becomes further entangled in war, Joetta finds herself shunned and struggling to survive. She remains committed to her principles, but the greatest tests are still to come both for Joetta’s family and the fractured nation. In honor of America’s 250^th Anniversary, an historical fiction novel to remind us of deep divisions our nation has overcome.

Strangers

by Belle Burden

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family navigating the early days of the pandemic together—Then, without warning or explanation, her husband of 20 years announced that he was leaving. Overnight, her partner became a man she hardly recognized. In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues. As she begins to see through a new lens, she reckons with the lessons about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal and transforms from a discreet, compliant woman to someone braver, and determined to use her voice.

UP! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise

by Kelly and Katy Mooney

The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

Most mornings, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. She used the letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness. The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

The Comfort Book

by Matt Haig

THE COMFORT BOOK is a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as reminders to the author’s future self that things are not always as dark as they seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

Splinters

by Leslie Jamison

Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception to the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her parents’ complicated bond. This book grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another. Examining what it means for a woman, a mother, an artist, a teacher, and a lover, she places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways resulting in a work of nonfiction like no other.