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Key points
- Self-care is important at the holidays and all year round.
- It’s easy to become overly involved in consumerism, social media, and electronics.
- While this can result in us neglecting to tend to our souls, we can renew our focus on what matters.
I’m sure you’ve heard the age-old adage, “Home is where the heart is.” We especially hear this phrase during the holidays. The holidays, though, can be a stressful and emotional time, including throughout the recent pandemic. Seeing relatives can be a mixed bag of emotions, and old (especially unhealed) wounds may sometimes bleed out into our present selves, even when, as adults, we seem to have it all together.
“Home is where the heart is,” while it’s a meaningful saying in many ways, may not capture the whole picture. This is particularly true when we place our self-care on the back burner. As the back burner heats up, the contents of the pot can sizzle beneath the surface and overflow when not stirred and tended to with loving care.
Home Is Where the Soul Is.
I think “home is where the soul is.” Let me explain that a bit without diving into the rabbit hole so much that I lose you.
Our soul—that deep force inside us that might be seen as a mystery—is our real self. Not the smile we paste on our jaw, the default “Fine, thanks” when asked “How are you?” or the makeup we women often hide behind, but rather some mystifying inner force that helps to guide us through the roller coaster of life. Everyone has their own philosophies and beliefs about what the soul actually is, but perhaps a more accepted view might be that it’s who we really are at our core after we peel away the layers we present to the world.
For instance, my soul beckons me to certain activities, such as writing, yoga, being in nature, and sound healing. It also draws me to certain parts of the world, such as Latin America. My soul is happy with particular people, animals, and nature, such as trees and lakes. When I don’t feed my soul, I become sad, stressed, and depressed.
Many of us in developed countries—especially in the U.S.—have forgotten to feed our souls. We have temporarily exchanged that which feeds our soul for a fast-paced lifestyle, getting sucked into social media, buying into the lure of the next best product to buy, and wasting eternal life on the computer and smartphone. We have all been guilty of this at some point.
Nurture and Feed Your Soul as if Your Life Depends Upon It.
Not feeding your soul, though, is akin to only feeding a plant water and forgetting that it desperately needs sunshine and plant food to thrive. We may limp through life and survive—and maybe even look healthy enough on the outside—but inside, our soul slowly shrivels.
What if we focus on feeding our souls? Let’s return to what makes our hearts dance. As long as it’s not hurting others (including people, animals, and the planet), soul-feeding should be considered as important as our actual intake of food and water.
It’s not just about taking a vacation or a mental health day from work, although these are both very important, as well. It’s about remembering—or finding—who we are at our core and nurturing this in ourselves. It’s about maybe not purchasing that brand-new, pricey car, so we can use that money toward activities that make us feel peace or joy.
Deciding not to buy a large, expensive house could perhaps unchain us from a job that stresses us out. This, in turn, might allow us to instead find meaningful work doing what we really love doing. What a concept, right?! Or perhaps merely cutting back on work hours to volunteer and live a life filled with purpose might feed your soul.
In this season of warmth and gratitude, perhaps some of us may make time to remember what makes our soul sing. What if, instead of investing in empty material objects so much this season, we invested in our souls? My hunch is that the return will be much more powerful and plentiful than we ever imagined.
