Five minutes of 'self-care' is not enough

And the antidote for mothers longing for more than to survive.

I see this idea floating around the internet that makes me grit my teeth, it goes something like this…’mom just take five minutes for yourself.’

I have been sitting with why this bothers me for months. This ideas has sat in my Substack idea list for quite a while and I recently started to turn it over again in my mind. I thought my issue was with time. The suggestion that five minutes could do anything pissed me off. I need a lot of time alone, motherhood doesn’t allow for what I was able to give myself before, but still I take a decent amount of time for myself when I can.

I thought I was angry at this idea because it feels neurotypical. Just take five minutes, breath, journal, and go back to life. It felt simplified by people who do not quite understand that method does not work for every mother out there.

I thought I was frustrated because ‘self-care’ sounds like another thing to do. Something I needed to add to my list and check off because a mother needs to take care of her self.

Finally, I dislike the word ‘self-care’ and how commercialized it has become. I thought mothers needed something more sustainable, like a practice. The ability to drop into the moment and feel what is present and deal with whatever is at hand. A way to face what was needed in the moment while also embracing what is. I do feel this is true.

Instead of thinking of taking care of ourselves as something to do in a short span of time, we look at honoring, listening, and tending to ourselves as something that happens in many different sized moments through out the day.

These recognitions are part of my feelings but I realized what strikes me as wrong about this idea of five minutes of ‘self-care’ is how limiting it is. It has an undertone that suggests five minutes is all one is worth and once your five minutes are up, you go back to caring for your child(ren).

While taking care of ourselves is imperative in motherhood, I would not argue against that. What I am trying to shed light on is the idea of taking care of ourselves is only worth it if it benefits those around us.

This idea keeps one in survival. I say this because I lived it. I gave myself five minutes during the first year and then some of my son’s life and it did nothing for my mental health and well-being. Because my mindset was take care of me in small windows, so I can feel a little bit better when it comes to taking care of him. I never found a way to fully recharge, I am still not sure I have, but that is a story for another time.

This approach to tending to myself left me hungry for my own attention because the only reason I was trying to pour into myself was to take care of my son. If I hear put your own oxygen mask on first one more time, I will scream. Because yes, and…

I want to do more than just survive.

I want to feel alive.

And five minutes of breathing deeply is not going to do that for me.

Yes, sometimes that is all we have. But when we say that day after day we start to live in scarcity, we stop thinking creatively and we forget we have needs beyond surviving to care for our humans.

I battle with myself about how much sacrifice motherhood requires. I am not one for martyrdom or pretending I do not have needs or my desires can wait until my kids are grown.

I feel I only have right now, and while it is a delicate juggling act to manage raising a child, work, and my creative pursuits, I do it. Because when I wasn’t honoring those needs, I was miserable.

Maybe you are content with your five minutes, and I do not want to take that away from anyone. But I also want to give permission to the mothers who five minutes does not feel like enough for. Mothers who have dreams and visions and not of success or money or anything our capitalistic society teaches us to reach for. But creative ideas that long to be brought to life through you as the vessel.

You are allowed to want things for yourself.

You are allowed to spend time alone.

You are allowed to take more than the bare minimum to survive.

I am inspired by the mothers I see writing on Substack, I am inspired by the creative ideas emerging from the mothers all around me. I do feel a revolution is happening here and we are collectively remember together.

But I also know outside messaging is convincing. I know sometimes we feel down on ourselves. I know I wonder why five minutes doesn’t work for me, I wonder if I am doing the right thing as a mother by spending time on my creativity, I wonder if there is much benefit as I believe there is in not making myself shrink down to what has been historically expected of me as a woman.

You are allowed to want more.

You are also allowed to enjoy your bubble bath or your favorite self-care practice and just be.

But if there is something nagging at you, biting at your heels, begging for your attention that is not your child(ren), this is an invitation to listen to it.

Honoring and respecting and facilitating your creativity will breathe more life into you and your family than five minutes of anything else ever will.

So, make something, write something, do something new.

We are more than just mothers, we are creatives.

Motherhood is a creative act (I believe these are

Lauren Barber

’s words in my head).

Creating a life, sustaining a life with your body and your bones, birthing that life into this world and continuing to tend to it and ensure it grows and develops.

Those are the building blocks of creativity.

Whether you consider yourself a creative or not, if you are a mother, you are already deeply intimate with the creative process.

Use this reminder as inspiration to dream for yourself, to speak something into existence, to circle back to something you let go of when you had kids.

What needs to be birthed through you in this season?

And what could happen if creativity became a central pillar in your life?

Creativity is part of self-tending. It goes deep than self-care, it is about more than five minutes and survival, it is life giving.

If you give yourself the space to create, I believe beautiful, wild, life affirming things will emerge. And those around you will feel the difference from you.

I became a more well-nourished, grounded, and stable mother when I allowed space for my creativity. When I made time for what excited me and poured my words onto the screen or my journal.

Sure, I still do things considered ‘self-care.’ I move my body, I meditate, I try to eat well and go to bed early. These are all important things. But this is a call to find the thing that makes you feel the most alive and spend more than five minutes with it. And to keep showing up to that thing as often as you can.

I promise it will change your life.

I promise it will change how you mother.

I promise it will bring you home deep into your bones, and fill you with a sense of wonder you have only ever seen in the eyes of your child.

You deserve that kind of magic too, mama. Go create it for yourself.

Emma

Welcome to Being in Motherhood, I’m Emma, a writer, artist, and mother constantly redefining myself. I write about what it means to be human while navigating motherhood, neurodivergence and living a full creative life. I believe reflection and compassion can change the world, the way we see things, and how we be here.