I have had a radical self-care routine for almost two decades. Reiki, massage, and essential oils became the three practices I returned to when I needed to hear myself clearly, care for my body, and remember that I matter. I call them my Holy Trinity of Self Care because each one gave me a different relationship with myself. Shadow work and astrology have moved through all of it, asking me to see the patterns underneath my choices and tell myself the truth about what I found.
This work grew over time through pain, panic, addiction, spiritual curiosity, bodywork, community, and the boundaries I learned too late. I did not build a practice around looking well. I built one because I needed a way to stay with myself when my old habit was to care for everyone else first. That is the work I am able to guide now, from nearly two decades of lived practice rather than theory.
Reiki taught me to care without depleting myself
I found Reiki in 2002 because I wanted to understand how Jesus healed. The story of Mikao Usui, founder of modern-day Reiki, spoke directly to that question. His students in the dojo were said to have asked how Jesus healed the sick without depleting himself, which led Usui to a 21-day fast and mountain hike. The story says he was attuned to Reiki on the 21st day and came down from that mountain infused with a different understanding of healing.
The teaching that reached me was that I do not have to give from my own exhausted life force. I can tune into the chi available through nature and the life force around me, then become a conduit for that energy. Reiki showed me that fueling myself first allows me to support others without disappearing inside their needs. That was a new way of understanding care for someone who had spent so much of her life giving more than she had.
At first, Reiki taught me to notice what was happening inside me. I began paying attention to energy, sensations, emotional responses, and the places where I had disconnected from myself. Over years of practice, it also taught me detachment from outcome. I can be present, care deeply, and offer support without taking responsibility for someone else's life or trying to control how their healing unfolds.
Shadow work taught me to tell myself the truth
In 2005, I began doing deep reflection. At 30 years old, I held a burial ceremony for the version of me I had become to survive. She was not a mistake. She had kept me alive, and I wanted to honor that before I began asking who I was underneath the survival adaptations.
Shadow work asked me to look at the patterns beneath my pain, panic, self-sacrifice, and need to hold everything together. It taught me that awareness is the gateway to wisdom, but awareness only matters when I am willing to be honest about what I see. Astrology has been part of that conversation with myself. It gives me language for patterns, cycles, and the things moving through my life so I can meet them with more awareness and choice.
Massage taught me that my body was communicating
Massage became another relationship with my body. I started my business with Reiki, crystals, and massage in 2007, then went to massage school in 2008. I completed my training in 2010 and became licensed in 2011. Becoming a massage therapist changed the way I understood the body because I had spent years living inside one that hurt.
I had physical pain from the time I was 19 years old, after joining the military. I kept going because I believed endurance was strength, and eventually I had to face the fact that I had lived with so much pain for so long that I had mistaken familiar for normal. Massage taught me that my body was not betraying me. It was communicating with me, and I had to learn how to listen before it had to scream.
Late in 2017, my body crashed after years of neglect and abuse. That season made me get honest about what I was doing to myself and what I was willing to keep tolerating. Massage taught me to notice tension before it became a crisis, touch the body with attention instead of judgment, and respect rest as part of being well. Healing came through returning to that relationship again and again.
Essential oils taught me that ritual can hold me
In 2014, I was tired of living in pain and panic, so I read The Anxiety Cure. The book helped me understand my addiction to smoking differently, and it introduced me to essential oils. I began using oils as part of quitting smoking and managing the symptoms I was living with. I needed support I could return to in the middle of my actual life, and oils gave me one way to begin.
In 2015, I found doTERRA and decided to learn more about oils for emotional support and community. White Fir and Cedarwood were two of the oils that held meaning for me early on. I spent two solid years feeling like I had found my oily tribe. What I was also finding was belonging.
When my body crashed in 2017, the oils and the community helped me navigate that season. They gave me sensory anchors I could return to, a scent, a breath, a hand placed gently on my own body, and a moment to ask myself what I needed right then. That is ritual to me. It is a practice that reminds me I matter while life is still happening around me.
Self-care requires sovereignty
I learned this part the hard way. You can meditate every day and still ignore your boundaries. You can receive massage and still tolerate relationships that hurt you. You can use beautiful oils and still keep pouring yourself into people who are emptying you.
Self-care became real for me when it included sovereignty. I had to learn that accepting people exactly as they are does not mean giving them unlimited access to me, and that compassion without boundaries has a cost. The practices could support me, but they could not make choices for me. I had to become willing to make the choices that protected my own life, body, and energy.
This is where my guidance comes from
I do not teach self-care because I read about it. I teach it because I had to learn how to care for myself through pain, panic, addiction, grief, trauma, rebuilding, spiritual exploration, entrepreneurship, community, and the boundaries I learned too late. I have had to learn how to listen to myself, come back into my body, create rituals that support me, and tell myself the truth. I am still learning.
That is the authority I carry. Not perfection. Practice. My experience does not make my path yours, but it allows me to meet you in the work without speaking from the outside of it. Your self-care will have its own language, and I hope you give yourself enough attention to learn what it is trying to say.