Welcome to the Self Replenishment Reframe


Because self care isn't enough.	View in browser

THE SELF REPLENISHMENT REFRAME

Hello and Welcome

Your interest in flipping the language and framework around self care is validation it is time we came together to reimagine how to meet our needs and prioritise ourselves in a way that doesn’t reinforce a narrative of brokenness, fragility, disempowerment, illness or not-enoughness.

My interrogation of self care was prompted by a discussion with fellow coaching students in early January this year. It was one of those accidental off-topic sessions Lisa Hayes is brilliant at allowing to unfold.

We talked about concepts that had lost their efficacy and potency by over-saturation in the mainstream media. We talked about concepts that had been hijacked by capitalism. We talked about concepts ham-fisted on the fly into existing coaching practices and business, so far removed from their social justice origins to be a mockery. Toward the end of the discussion Georgette flagged self care as one of those concept that had been diluted to the point of an eye roll.

I knew what she meant.

My skin crawled every time I thought about (or someone mentioned) self care … even though I KNEW the prioritisation of my needs and the practical things I did to meet them were absolutely necessary. I’d successfully navigated myself out of 13 months of nervous system overwhelm by consistently tending to my needs according to the tenets of self care. But ... I erred away from speaking of it as self care.

The language was all wrong. I knew that. We needed a better word than care though.

Then I did what word witches do best: I received an intuitive download and embolden by the ease with which it came through, I shared it with my class.

“I think we need to talk about it in terms of self replenishment,” I said, and no one argued. In fact you could hear the hope and spark of recognition run through the other women on the call.

All year I have poked around the edges of self replenishment and why it is a robust and responsive alternative to self care. I talked about it to anyone who would listen to me. Instead of casting a net, I beachcombed, waiting to see what additional pieces washed up for me to collect. I felt like something significant was missing to bring it together as a cohesive whole.

In September I graduated as a life coach with the Coaching Guild. My graduation panel unfolded on the cusp of the September equinox and the start of my summer year. It also happened in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade. Even though I’m based in Australia, the shock waves were felt here.

One of the final panel questions was about how I would talk to a client about self care in the wake of something like Roe v Wade. All the poking, questioning and reconceptualising, all that fucking amorous stuff I hadn’t quite been able to form into a cohesive “something”, suddenly came together with startling clarity.

But before I launched into the treatise which had written itself in the space between heart beats, I was told to wait and listen. I was getting one last intuitive drop. I remember the words forming in my head and smiling.

So the first thing I said to the panel of women was: “The first thing we need to talk about when we talk about self care is to stop abandoning ourselves. We have been conditioned, socialised, shaped, shamed and gaslit, just to name a few things, to put ourselves last. That has to stop.

“The second thing we need to talk about is self replenishment rather than self care because when you speak to any woman about self care, her immediate thought is: Fuck! Another person to take care of.

“And that’s why self care is an uphill battle, especially for women who already carry the lion share of the practical and emotional burden of care.”

I went on to talk about why we need self replenishment rather than self care. I shared the three interconnected components of it as I had come to understand them.

There was stunned silence when I finished. Divided between the four women on my graduation panel was close to fifty years of coaching experience and none of them had ever heard of self care spoken quite like I’d done.

And well, I haven’t stopped talking about self replenishment since.

But talking with individual clients and random friends isn’t enough.

It is time to talk to you and your friends and family and colleagues and neighbours about this. To let you consider where and how this can support and embolden you.

How tending to your needs will fill you up, powered by spark and excitement, rather than drudgery and yet more grind work.

How it will be flexible, responsible and adaptive rather than prescriptive and built on lists that feel like just more fucking work.

Or moonlighting as capitalism’s savvy handmaiden.

I look forward to you joining me on the 29th December as I go deep into a language and framework which I believe is what our bodies, minds, hearts and souls have been yearning.

A link to the recording will be sent within 24 hours of the call for anyone who cannot make it live.

I look forward to sharing this with you.

Biggest Love
Jodi xxx

PS: If you have friends, colleagues, neighbours or family members who'd like to be there for the cal -- please direct them here.