My Simple Self Care Sunday Ritual

I love Sundays. They’re slow, quiet, and comforting in all the right ways. Sundays just make me want to love on myself, like I look in the mirror and see this young woman who just needs more pampering, more love, more soul time and I just want to treat her right and show her what’s good you know? Lol. So in the spirit of being more deliberate, I scoured all the self help pages, pinned about a hundred self care pins and tried a bunch of ways to center myself on Sundays and this list is where I am with that, hopefully it helps you. Remix it, put it down, flip it then reverse it (❤ Missy) whatever you do, make even an hour of your Sundays about you. Because you deserve.

I treat myself

Cooking is cool but it’s not my favourite thing. It just has a weird way of making me anxious and agitated so when I’m making my own meals I tend to go for quick and simple rather than exciting. I flip that on Sunday and try to embody the Jamaican tradition of Sunday dinner by simply making more of an effort to make at least one meal that excites me. Sometimes it’s actual Jamaican Sunday dinner, rice and peas and everything but sometimes it’s as simple as a fancier salad, oatmeal with nuts, bananas and raisins or ice cream. 

This is important to me because I’m constantly being bombarded with messages about what fat people deserve (very little if anything), our food choices are so overly examined and critiqued by everyone so in building a better relationship with myself and recognizing and caring for my needs, I’ve realized I need to build a better relationship with food. So this is my attempt at a first step.

Get some family time

I’m always saying this, I love my parents so much. They are my single greatest privilege. When I was growing up I would always wake up in the morning and head right for their bed, and the three of us would just lay there talking, laughing and just being close. I love them, so so much and, as an only child, they’re my everything. They’re not perfect but they’re mine you know?Time spent with them just makes me feel more grounded, blessed, loved and appreciated. I could never get tired of that feeling. Never.

Clean up

This is probably the simplest way to completely re-route my whole day. As much as I’d love my Sundays to be idyllic in every way, the week doesn’t just stop because the day changed. Often stressful situations and difficult feelings bleed over or something happens and I’m suddenly annoyed or angry. When that happens I tend to clean. Cleaning an reorganizing focuses my mind on something external to me so my thoughts can run in the background without me scrutinizing them. It’s a way to feel my feelings without ruminating excessively. Plus, when I get that nice boost of feeling accomplished when I’m done and the cleanliness itself is calming.

I curate my media

You may have figured this out by now, but I’m big on feelings. It’s in almost everything I write or do. Can’t help it. So I sort all my media by how they make me feel. Books, films, music — everything gets sorted into categories like “dance dance baby” or “blow off steam”. Usually I want to feel good or calm or loved on Sundays so I’ll just make selections from the lists that go with those feelings. 

Here’s some suggestions:

For Sunday films go to agoodmovietowatch.com, check out the mood category and look at the feel good, uplifting, heart warming, touching, and sweet tags. 

My personal suggestions: About Time, Where The Wild Things Are, Inside Out, Interstellar, Chef, The Hundred Foot Journey, Boyhood, Arrival, The Kids Are Alright, An Education, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before 1 and 2, and Pride & Prejudice (2005).

For Books: Try my go to Sunday poetry read right now, All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living by Morgan Harper Nichols

For music, I have playlists! Check out the first ten songs on my Sunday soul playlist. If you have Tidal you can see the rest of it here. I’m always updating it so keep checking back for more soulful tunes.

Spend time outside

Honestly, sometimes I just open a window for a while, or sit on a verandah, or if I can I take a walk along my street or play with my cats in the yard. It’s just good to see the mountains, hear birdsong, feel the wind, watch the sunset and the moonrise. But the absolute best days to do this are rainy days. I love a rainy day, give me thunderstorms and grey skies. I love it. 

Get some movement

I’ve been trying yoga… but my go to way to move is to dance! I just put on something that makes me feel like moving and get out of my head and into my body. I’m not saying it’s good dancing but it’s fun and I always, always feel better.

Spend some time in water

Now this is the center of my Sunday ritual. Even if it’s just a shower, it’s not just a shower, it’s an event. I turn out the lights, I light candles, I put on a playlist, I get out my lavender body wash and I spent a little extra time. I love it so much I try to wash my hair on Sundays so I can spend even longer in the shower lol. Then there’s the after care, getting all moisturized and oiled up and into my fancy pjs and finally getting into bed.

Journal

So I do lots of different types of journaling but the one that really works on Sundays is my flip on Julia Cameron’s morning pages. So the idea is that when you wake up in the morning you write three pages of anything that comes to mind, stream of consciousness, whatever. A friend introduced me to the concept months ago because it worked for her. So I tried it and… it was cool but I hate mornings and my way of coping with being awake is to not *have* anything at all to do in the morning if I can. Having to do stuff in the morning annoys me, so I’ve flipped it and now I try to do Night Pages! Right before I go to bed I write out whatever’s on my mind, how I feel, what happened, what I want to happen the next day, random song lyrics, doesn’t matter, I just write. It’s like a brain dump. This isn’t scientific but I feel like having an emptier head and heart soothes me and that helps me to sleep better.

Sleep

Yep. Straightforward. Simple. Go to bed. Sleep is my bestfriend, or whatever Popcaan said lol. But seriously, I don’t skimp on the zzz’s. It’s the perfect way to wrap up a lovely Sunday. Tell me about your Sunday :)