If a friend came to me with the day I’d just had — the thing forgotten, the reply sent too sharp, the plan that fell apart by ten in the morning — I wouldn’t list her failures back to her. I’d make her a cup of tea and tell her it’s alright, that days go like that sometimes.
Somehow the same grace doesn’t always make it to me.
Give yourself some Grace isn’t really about lowering the bar. It’s about noticing that the bar was never the point — the care was. The same care I’d hand a friend without a second thought, just turned around and pointed inward for once.
I knew this. I could have written you this whole thing a month ago as a tidy little belief and moved on. Then last Saturday happened, and I understood it differently.
My husband had been encouraging me for weeks. Go and pamper yourself. Spend some time — and some money — on feeling good. I said yes the way you say yes to something you mean but haven’t quite made room for.
The first attempt didn’t work. Sunday, I got up with every intention, drove to the shopping centre, and found nothing open, the lights too bright, the people too much. I bought a tablet and came home. Not the plan, but not nothing either.
Midweek, I tried again. A protest march had taken over the city, my legs were tired, and I went straight home instead. Friday was my actual window — except a work bowling night came up instead, and honestly, that was its own good thing. A light way to end a heavy week.
So it was Saturday before any of it happened. Hair salon booking, waxing bar, a full set of nails, a deluxe pedicure — the first time I’d let anyone near my feet since all my foot operations. It felt strange. Not entirely pleasant, if I’m honest — the nerve endings still aren’t quite right down there. But underneath the strangeness, I felt something I hadn’t expected. I felt good.
Halfway through, I realised I only had socks and shoes with me and wasn’t about to ruin brand new toenails getting them on. I rang my husband. He came to the rescue, and while he was there we picked out something nicer than what I would have grabbed myself.
Then a facial — his idea again. An hour, eyes closed, soft music, hands on my face and neck and shoulders. I didn’t know how much I needed that until I was in it.
I didn’t touch my phone the whole day. Just stayed where I was.
By the time my hair was done, three hours later, I walked out feeling like a different woman, this beautiful man still beside me the whole time. We stopped for a light sushi dinner before heading home with takeaway for our boys, who’d been patiently waiting all day.
I looked in the mirror that night and actually recognised myself.
Here’s what I keep sitting with, though. I probably wouldn’t have done any of this if it had been left to me. It took someone who loves me pushing gently, week after week, before I let myself have it.
Would I have gotten there eventually, on my own? Maybe.
But I think what I actually need to learn is how to turn up for myself the way my family turns up for me. To love myself the way they already do — without needing to be talked into it first.
Give yourself some Grace was never just a nice line. It’s a practice. And apparently, for me, it still takes someone else believing in it first, before I can believe it on my own.
I don’t have this figured out. I’m not writing to you from the other side of it, having cracked the code on loving myself unprompted. I’m writing from inside it — still learning what it looks like to prepare the space for myself the way I’d prepare it for someone I love, without waiting to be told it’s allowed.
That’s really what this is. Not an answer. A practice of working it out, a little at a time, in the reflecting and the noticing and the trying again after the weeks it doesn’t happen. And if telling you about my Saturday helps you remember something about your own — some grace you’ve been rationing for everyone but yourself — then that’s the whole point. We get to work this out together, and remind each other along the way.
If this is the first time we’ve sat together, welcome. This is the Table, and there’s a place here for you, no charge for belonging.
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