Here’s a little list of self-love rituals that I like to do. If you’re looking for something to try and connect more with yourself, you can try one or more of these things.
The morning candle ritual
Light a candle first thing in the morning and say aloud:
“Today, I choose to come home to myself.”Let that moment be your reset.
Mirror touch-in
Each day, take 60 seconds to look into your eyes in the mirror and softly say:
“I am here for you.”It may feel awkward at first—but over time, it becomes powerful.
Self-love journal ritual
Keep a little notebook just for affirming yourself. Write one kind sentence to yourself every day. Examples:
“I’m proud of you.”
“You are showing up.”
“You did enough today.”
Sacred bath or shower time
Turn bathing into a ritual. Add flowers, essential oils, music, or a poem on the wall.
As you wash, whisper: “I release what I no longer need.”
Nature connection check-in
Step outside. Put your hand on your heart and take 3 slow breaths. Look up at the sky, or down at a single flower or leaf.
Feel held by the earth.
Write yourself a love letter
Once a month, write yourself a letter starting with:
“Dear me, I love you because...”Seal it. Read it when you’re feeling low.
Gentle movement ritual
Dance, stretch, or just sway to a song that makes you feel good. Even 3 minutes can shift your mood and reconnect you to your body.
Nighttime gratitude wrap-up
Before bed, whisper three things you loved about yourself that day—big or small. Let that be the last thing your mind hears.
Inner child tea time
Once a week, have tea or cocoa with your inner child. Do something they would love (read a fairytale, color, watch cartoons).
Say: “I see you. I love you. You’re safe with me.”
Create an “I’m struggling” ritual box
Fill it with things that soothe:
A kind letter from yourself
A soft object (scarf, plushie)
A grounding scent (lavender oil, incense)
A playlist or quote card
When you’re overwhelmed, open the box and treat it as sacred.
Let’s be honest: most of us have tangoed with perfectionism. We know it way too well—like the stubborn burrs that stick to your socks after a hike. And here’s the thing: perfectionism isn’t some noble badge of honor. It’s more like poison ivy for your soul—scratchy, inflamed, and guaranteed to make you miserable.
I used to think perfectionism was just part of my personality. A cute little quirk. A fun fact I’d share in job interviews (I’m a graphic designer, hi there). I’d say, “Perfectionism is my best and worst quality,” as if that made it sound balanced—like it was a well-trained house pet I could summon at will. But the truth is, perfectionism is a trauma response dressed up in a sparkly outfit. I didn’t know that until recently. And once I knew, I couldn’t un-know it.
My perfectionism had me chasing invisible finish lines—pushing, straining, squeezing every drop of energy out of myself in hopes of finally feeling worthy. And you know what? Even the rare times I thought I’d nailed it, it felt hollow. All I got was exhaustion and the sneaking suspicion I was a slave to my own creativity.
I burned out. Slowly, like a log smoldering in a campfire you forgot to stamp out. Ten years of pushing, striving, never resting. And eventually, I crashed face-first into the wall (and yes, it hurt).
So I made a radical choice: I quit the cult of perfection.
I still hear the old voice in my head—the one that insists everything must be impeccable or else it doesn’t count. But now I smile at that voice and hand it a cup of chamomile tea. I don’t have time to indulge it anymore.
Curious how I loosened its grip?
I set out to create mediocre stuff. On purpose. I told myself: “Just meet the brief. Nothing extra. No sprinkles, no fancy flourishes. Just do the work and walk away.”
And guess what? It was deliciously freeing. Like stripping off heavy, wet clothes after a rainstorm.
I discovered that when you stop trying to be perfect, you actually remember how to have fun. You remember why you started creating in the first place.
These days, I don’t give 100% all the time. I’m not a machine, and neither are you. Sometimes I’m at 73%. Sometimes it’s a solid 12%. Sometimes it’s 48.5% (with a little glitter thrown in). And that’s enough. Because I’ve learned—burnout is what happens when you live at 100% for too long. You end up with 0% for months or years. And trust me, that is not the vibe.
Right now, I’m still recharging. Resting. Letting the soil of my life lie fallow so something new can grow. And this time, I refuse to sprint back into the fast lane. My mental health matters more than some imaginary ideal of “perfect.”
So if you’ve been sprinting too, maybe it’s time to slow down. Take a walk among the trees. Let your to-do list compost itself for a while.
You are allowed to be a living, breathing, imperfect human. You are allowed to fluctuate. You are allowed to rest.
Because your worth was never measured in percentages.
And perfection? It’s just a mirage in the desert—forever out of reach. You deserve better. You deserve peace. You deserve the kind of life that feels like a meadow at dusk—soft, real, and full of quiet magic.
Okay. Deep breath. This post feels like cracking my ribs open and letting everyone peek at the sad little organ pumping inside. But here goes nothing.
I’ve always struggled to make friends—and maybe even more so to keep them. It’s like friendship is this dance everyone else learned in kindergarten, and I’m still tripping over my own feet, apologizing, and trying to clap along to the beat I can’t hear.
After finding out I might have ASD, it clicked. Oh. That might explain why I’ve spent so much of my life in this fog of confusion, trying to figure out why I can never quite belong.
But I need to say more. I want to name these feelings—some of them are ugly little goblins, and if I don’t drag them into the light, they’ll keep chewing holes in me.
When I’m making friends
Right off the bat: I’m introverted. Painfully, annoyingly, cosmically introverted. Sure, sometimes I look social and chatty, but that’s just my well-rehearsed performance. Like a circus act where the clown is secretly crying behind the greasepaint.
Talking online feels safer. But even here—behind screens and usernames—I still manage to screw it up.
I’ve always prided (ha) myself on reading people. Spoiler alert: I’m absolutely terrible at it.
Usually, one of two things happens:
I say almost nothing, because I’m too busy scanning, analyzing, overthinking.
Or…I become the human embodiment of an emotional flood warning. Hello, here are my deepest secrets and my entire trauma history on a silver platter. Would you like an hors d’oeuvre of my neuroses?
I don’t know if it scares people away. Maybe it does. Probably. And then I’m left in that humiliating aftermath: replaying everything I said, wondering why I overshared, and assuming everyone thinks I’m weird.
(Yay, “quirky!” My lifelong consolation prize.)
And honestly, that’s usually the first stage of losing people. And…I try to tell myself that’s okay.
Some people do stick around. They keep talking to me. They seem to want to know me.
Okay. So…we’re friends now. And then what?
When we become friends
This is where the real mess starts.
Because once I care about someone—really care—it’s like I tunnel-vision on them. My brain flips a switch: This is your person now.I pour everything in. My heart, my time, my attention.
And here’s the part I hate admitting: I expect them to do the same.
I want to pretend I don’t, but I do. It’s my kryptonite.
When I was younger, I didn’t even realize it was disappointment I was feeling. That dull ache in my chest whenever someone didn’t text back or didn’t seem as excited to see me. But it was disappointment.
I thought everyone else was as ready to dive deep as I was. Turns out…most people aren’t. And maybe that’s normal. Maybe I’m the one who’s not.
Because I can’t split my focus across a whole flock of friendships. My brain doesn’t work like that. I find one person. I cling. I hyperfocus.
And then I get hurt. Again and again.
I don’t blame people for thinking I’m too much.
Because…I probably am.
Or—maybe—I used to be too small. Too careful. Too invisible. And now that I’m finally trying to take up space, it feels like nobody knows how to fit me in their lives.
I’m still trying to figure out which parts of this are my authentic self and which parts are just trauma dressed up in a funny hat.
The imbalance
This is the part that always breaks me.
I start noticing I’m the only one sharing my troubles. The other person isn’t.
They say less. They withdraw.
And that sends me straight back to the stories I make up:
They don’t care.
They’re annoyed by me.
I’m too much.
I did something wrong.
I can’t read them. Not really. So I invent these little horror stories in my head. And every time they don’t reply, I play them on repeat, starring me as the villain and the victim.
And when the silence stretches too long, that old, raw abandonment wound cracks open again.
Do they hate me?
Why don’t they respond?
Did I overshare?
Am I too much?
Not enough?
I never ask. Because I’m terrified the answer is: It’s you. You’re the problem.
The fixing
That’s when the fixing impulse slithers in.
If I just try harder, if I say the right thing, if I make them happy…they won’t leave me.
Yikes.
God, it sounds pathetic when I type it out.
But this is the story I learned in childhood. The same pattern. My friendships turn into this unbalanced equation where I’m frantically trying to hold everything together—so there won’t be an explosion.
Except this time, there is no eruption. No screaming, no chaos.
Just the slow, quiet slipping away. Like trying to hold onto sand.
And I’m left alone again, staring at my empty hands.
Then comes the censoring:
I say less.
I share less.
I monitor every word.
I hope—stupidly—that they’ll notice my silence and reach out.
They don’t.
And I tell myself more stories.
Probably all wrong.
Probably all rooted in my own fear.
In the end…I walk away.
Because leaving hurts less than staying in that weird purgatory of wondering.
I grieve what we had. I mourn the little space I thought I’d found.
And then I gather up my shattered pieces and I decide:
I’m not meant to have friends.
I don’t deserve them.
This spiral guts me every time.
It feels like I’m re-traumatizing myself.
When I finally realized this is all one big trauma response, I felt…tired. So tired.
What if I can’t stop repeating this?
What if no matter how low I set my expectations, I still end up disappointed?
What if this really is just who I am—someone destined to orbit the edges of other people’s lives, never quite allowed in?
I’m still that scared little girl—and honestly, it’s wrecking my friendships.
I’ve always been the person with my heart stitched right onto my sleeve—messy threads and all. And I’ve always struggled to collect more than a couple friends at once, like I was only issued a very tiny emotional basket at birth. Maybe I can thank my ASD for that. Maybe it’s just me. But when I try to balance more than two close people, my brain goes into meltdown mode, like, Error 404: Capacity for Multiple Friendships Not Found.
And God—whenever my friends didn’t pour back into me the same way I was pouring into them, it felt like my heart was leaking out somewhere, and I couldn’t plug the hole. I always felt like I was loving them more than they ever loved me. Which turned into this sticky, shameful sadness… and jealousy. Ugly, green-eyed jealousy that I have hated—HATED—for years. But here’s the thing: those feelings are just feelings. They don’t mean I’m a bad person. If I’m ever going to crawl out of this cycle of love-overspending and soul-shrinking, I have to understand what’s happening in the first place.
I think a lot of it was this ferocious, aching hunger to be seen. To be chosen. I didn’t want to “share” my friends with other people. And also—how do some of you have, like, twelve best friends and still remember their birthdays? How do you not combust from emotional overload? Truly, I need a manual.
And the scariest confession? I always thought it was safer to be the one to hurt first. So, I’d sabotage everything before they could leave me. I carried this heavy, iron feeling in my chest: that I am too much. Or maybe I’m not enough. Either way, I end up alone. And it still hurts just as much today as it did when I was a little girl.
When I do make a friend, I want to give them everything. All the weird, wonderful, messy parts of me. But then, when they drift away—and they almost always drift away—it’s like someone rips out my ribcage. So I started rationing myself. Only giving the polished surface parts, keeping the deeper bits hidden behind caution tape. I hate it. I hate feeling like this is what people prefer: shallow puddles instead of oceans.
Why don’t people want the deep conversations? You know—the ones that go on for hours and end with you feeling like you’re cracked open in the best possible way? I am so grateful for the precious few I’ve found who do want that. But there are others I used to be deep with, and somewhere along the way, I got the creeping suspicion I was taking up too much space. So I did what I do best: I shrank. I folded myself into something smaller and more palatable. And when they didn’t reply, it confirmed every old fear: they don’t care.
Maybe I don’t actually understand people as well as I think I do. I like to believe I can read a room, read a face, but maybe I’m just… wrong. Maybe maintaining friendships is hard for everyone, but it feels impossibly hard for me. Too hard. Only once—just once—have I felt that perfect balance: two people pouring into each other equally, sharing everything, leaving space for both of us to exist fully. She’s my soulmate, no question. And of course, she lives in another country. Life has a twisted sense of humor that way.
If I’m going to be painfully honest—like rip-off-the-Band-Aid honest—I feel like I’m destined to be alone. I know, logically, I’m not. But the way I always have to shrink myself in friendships is exhausting. I recently took a “break” from someone because the imbalance felt like it was swallowing me. Like, I needed to see if I could just not overshare for once. It’s only been a day, and I don’t know yet if it helped, or if I just gave myself another thing to overthink.
Maybe I expect too much from people. Maybe my heart is too big for its own good. Maybe I’m just doomed to be perpetually disappointed when no one shows up the way I hope they will. It’s exhausting—never finding a place where I can be exactly who I am without feeling like I’m either too much or not enough. I’ve spent a lifetime hiding pieces of myself. Except with that one friend I found here—on Tumblr, of all places. She’ll always be special to me, even though we’re both busy and talk less these days. I miss her. I miss that feeling of being seen.
I don’t really know what I wanted this post to be. A confession? A cry for solidarity? Maybe both. Maybe neither. I just needed to say it.
Does anyone else feel like this? Or am I just weird?
It is a gentle reflection on self-tending, rooted healing, and blooming from within.
There’s something sacred in the idea of tending to your own garden.
For a long time, I didn’t.
I poured my energy into others—into being there, fixing, helping, over-extending—until I was dried out and wilting inside. I thought love was about giving and giving, without pausing to ask, “And what do I need?” But healing has taught me this:
You cannot bloom by abandoning your own roots.
To water your garden is to choose yourself—not in a selfish way, but in the most necessary, soul-honoring way.
It’s waking up and checking in with your heart before checking your phone.
It’s noticing your feelings instead of judging them.
It’s letting yourself cry when you need to, without rushing the rain.
It’s saying no when something doesn’t feel aligned—even if it’s hard.
Watering your garden means being mindful of your inner weather.
It’s asking, “What do I need right now?” It’s giving your inner child room to breathe, room to play, room to be heard.
Maybe they were neglected once. Maybe their voice got quiet. But they never left you. They’re still waiting for you to kneel down beside them, hand them a paintbrush, or invite them outside to look at clouds.
Watering your garden means believing your emotions are not weeds to pull, but signs of life—part of the landscape of being human.
Some days you’ll feel like sunshine.
Some days, storm clouds.
Both are welcome. Both are valid.
Both can nourish something.
And slowly, when you begin to care for your body like a home, to soften your thoughts, to protect your peace, to trust your pace—your roots grow deeper.
Your inner soil becomes richer.
Your mind begins to bloom in ways you never thought possible.
It’s not about fixing yourself.
It’s about feeding yourself.
Holding yourself.
Loving yourself through every season.
So, water your garden. Daily. Gently. Without shame.
Because the more you tend to your own soil,
the more beautifully you can show up for the world around you—
not from depletion, but from wholeness.
Not from fear, but from love.
Not with wilted petals, but with open palms,
and a heart in full bloom.
I have written a collection of poems on watering your garden, that you can buy on Amazon (UK), Amazon (DE), Amazon (US) and Barnes & Noble.
