Is This Self-Care or Self-Abandonment?

My friend Selena said something this spring that I have not been able to put down.

If you are choosing to show up for other people consistently to the detriment of yourself, that is not self-care. That is self-abandonment.

I read that line a dozen times. I sat with it on a Sunday. I cried a little. And then I went looking for all the places in my own life where I had been calling something self-care that was actually a very polite, very productive form of leaving myself behind.

Here is what I noticed.

Saying yes to the call I did not want to take, because she needed me. Self-abandonment dressed up as kindness.

Scrolling my phone for an hour at the end of a hard day and telling myself it was decompressing. Self-abandonment dressed up as rest.

Working through lunch because the project mattered. Self-abandonment dressed up as professionalism.

Saying yes to the dinner I did not have energy for. Self-abandonment dressed up as connection.

None of those are wrong things to do. Sometimes you do say yes. Sometimes you do work through lunch. Sometimes the scroll is genuinely what you need.

But the question I am asking now, every time, is this.

Am I choosing this from a full place, or am I choosing this because I do not know how to disappoint anyone?

If you cannot tell the difference yet, beautiful soul, I want to tell you that is not a moral failing. It is a wound. And it is a wound that almost every woman I coach is carrying.

Most of us were taught to be useful before we were taught to be whole. Most of us learned that we earned love by what we did, not by who we were. Most of us are still untangling that quietly, in the middle of a busy life, without anyone noticing.

This is the work I love most. Not the decluttering. Not the systems. The quiet, slow, sacred work of helping a woman learn the difference between caring for herself and abandoning herself in service of others.

If this stirred something in you, my book Creating Space with Julie: A Step-by-Step Guide to Decluttering and Self-Care is a gentle place to keep going. It walks you, story by story, through the difference between caring for yourself and abandoning yourself, and it is written for exactly this kind of quiet, sacred work. Find it at

🔗 creatingspacewithjulie.com/thebookshelf

With so much love and gratitude,

Julie xo

P.S. If you noticed yourself in one of those scenarios above, you are not alone. Reply and tell me which one. We will sit in it together.