(Laura Lynn Brown, over at Makesyoumom.com is leading a discussion this summer around self-care – you can find upcoming discussion topics here.  Then add your voice to the conversation in the comments.  This conversation is near and dear to my heart and I’m looking forward to following along and contributing as I am able.  This post is linked with the topic: Self-Care Assess Your Situation. )

Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’ . . . Billy
Preston

If I were to
sum my self-care situation up in two phrases they would be, “too little” and
“too much.”

Too little
quiet, solitude, stillness.

Too much
laundry, loudness and scattered demands.

Too little
money, time, support.

Too much
chaos.

“Too little”
and “too much.”

Looking
closer, however, I notice these two phrases can be further reduced to one word –
“too.”

“Too” is,
like “also” and “and,” a word of addition; it is yes and inclusion and
multiplication.

Perhaps one
of the greatest challenges and rewards of welcoming two (by which I mean twins)
is learning to live in and welcome “too.” 
For much of my life I’ve longed for singularity of purpose and identity and
now I find myself learning how to embrace the gifts of many and much. 

Yet “too”
presupposes the existence of something prior – some thing, some one, to which “too”
is added.  I can see now, in learning to
live with “too” that it is not my job to prevent “too” or even try to control
it, but to tend to the one to which “too” is always being added. 

Self-care is
attention to the center, the root, the self onto which all of life is added in
varied measures. 

Self-care is
not in opposition to “too” but rather presupposes “too.”

Lately, one
little line from Billy Preston’s 1974 hit, “Nothing’ from Nothing” has been
following me around in my head as I tend to all of the little “too’s” that add
up my life these days,

“Nothin’
from nothin’ leaves nothin’,

you gotta
have somethin’ if you wanna be with me.”

Sometimes it
feels like all of the “too’s” in my life leave me with nothin’.  When I am at zero, which I often am, I have
nothing to give and all of those too’s just pile up, neither good nor bad, just
“too.”  I’m beginning to heed the signs
that tell me I’m headed toward nothin’, to notice the moments when zero is rapidly approaching.  

At
thirty-eight I’m relearning basic addition and subtraction, recalculating the cost
of “too” and working to maintain “somethin’” lest we all be left with “nothin’”.  More than ever before I understand that it all begins with one.