July Self-Care Retreat Redux

I am really excited to announce the 2^nd annual July Self-Care Retreat!  We’ve got a great lineup of wonderful bloggers committed to making an extra effort to practicing self-care this month, and we’re hoping that you join us, too!

To me, self-care is like learning a second language as an adult.  I certainly wasn’t born knowing how to do it, it wasn’t a natural impulse for me, and it’s something that I to make a conscious effort to weave into my daily life.  The other two self-care retreats  were helpful by keeping my goals and commitments on my radar, and I’m hoping it had the same effect on others as well.

Self-care is about compassion and kindness.  At the essence, it comes down to intention.  Movement, dietary changes and even commitments with others, are all about context.  We’ve all seen how, say, exercise can be incredibly invigorating and enriching, and how it can also be another measuring stick, another “should” or way to judge ourselves.  Or how we can bake a cake for the joy of it, or for the celebration of friends and family and the pleasure of having a chocolaty-smelling kitchen.  Yet how easily this can be distorted into overcommitting to doing something out of obligation.

So my intention here for myself and for everyone who joins us to is to encourage you incorporate or even try out different self-care practices because you want to feel and live well, not because of some additional arbitrary standard to live up to.

Our fantastic group of bloggers:
June 30^th: Me! Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness                Food

July 7^th: Valerie of City Life Eats                                 Support and connection

July 14^th: Shirley of Gluten Free Easily (GFE)         Movement

July 21^st: Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl                       Creativity

July 28^th Iris of The Daily Dietribe                              Inward Reflection

These posts are to inspire you all to make July a month of reflecting on self-care and the many ways to nourish ourselves.   We encourage everyone to participate in this event in a way that feels appropriate to them, whether through personal reflection, journal or other self-care.  If you would like to share your experience with self-care, we would love to include you in the experience, whether you join us for one week or every week.  You can write generally about self-care and how you include it in your life, or “try on” one of the practices we’re blogging about over the course of the next week (movement, food, family/friends/pets, creativity and inward reflection). We ask that you link back to this post so that more people can learn about this retreat, and leave a comment for the weekly theme host, too!  If you would like to be included in our roundup and the drawing, please email a link to your post, along with your name and blog name, to us at selfcareretreat at gmail dot com by July 30, 2011.

As a little added incentive, for each post on your goals and your progress you link back here or one of the other co-hosts, you’ll be entered to receive a $50 gift certificate to Nuts.com  (they are not sponsoring, I just wanted something with healthy gluten-free, vegan, sugar-free, etc. options)

Valerie of City Life Eats designed us a badge, and feel free to use the badge in your posts.  Non-bloggers who would like to contribute, please email the full text to the same address and it will be included in the roundup.

For a “flavor” of previous retreats, here’s a link to the July Self-Care Retreat and the December Sanity Retreat.

As you can tell, we’ve been busy bloggers!

Welcome & kick off posts from:

• Shirley GFE
• Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl
• Valerie of City Life Eats
• Iris of Daily Dietribe
• Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness (you’re already here!)

Food as Self-Care

• Food Restrictions as Self-Care by Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness
• Thoughts on Food and Self Care Valerie of City Life Eats
• Check in from Valerie

Self-Care Through Connection

• Support and Connection Valerie of City Life Eats
• Putting life in perspective Iris of Daily Dietribe

Self-Care Through Movement

• Movement (reinventing a game from childhood) Shirley of Gluten Free Easily
• Joy of Movement Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness
• Self Care Retreat: Movement Valerie of City|Life|Eats

Self-Care on the Road & Trip Report from Southern NJ by Shirley of GFE

Self-Care through Creativity

Using Creativity as Self-Care by Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl
Creative Self-Care (and Double Chocolate PB Oat Cookies!)from Shirley of GFE (temporarily removed)
Self-Care through Creativity and an Ooey, Gooey Chocolate Chip Pie Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness