Women and the Salon

 I was thinking as I was leaving the hair salon a week ago, feeling all good about myself, how funny it is that women love the salon. In some ways, we live for the salon. Think about it, how many of us love going to the beauty salon? No matter what kind a day we are having, even if it is one of the worst days you have ever had, you leave the salon feeling better about yourself. We love to get our hair done, have facials, massages, or mani's and pedi's. We love it. There is something to be said about taking time to do something for ourselves. I feel like there are some who need to do it more. I have been thinking about so many of my friends who are so stressed out with motherhood and all that it entails and demands that they forget about taking care of themselves. We need to do something for ourselves even if it is only a simple pedicure. It is something. I think as women we feel the need to be perfect or live up to the pictures we see in magazines and it makes us feel worse about ourselves. We get busy trying to be the perfect wife or mother or caregiver that we stress ourselves out to the point where we feel bad about ourselves. We all struggle with it. I know I do. I was so stressed out trying to adjust to being a new wife and stepmother that I lost sight of a lot of things that mattered, important things. I was so busy trying to "be perfect" in everything that I did that when I made a mistake or failed at something it made me feel insecure and not worthy of love. That in turn made me lash out at those around me or I would just spend so much time trying to have the "perfect" everything that I didn't appreciate the simple or the little things. I had to learn a hard lesson about what matters and I would like to think I would do things differently now.

One thing I will never do differently though is taking some time for myself. I am sure a lot of people think that since I am single and live alone, I have so much time to myself. While that may be true some of the time it isn't always the case. I still need my spa or salon days when I can just forget about the worries of life and relax and rejuvenate my body, mind, and spirit and leave feeling better about myself. We all need to feel good about ourselves. So this is my advice to all of us, most of all to myself. We need to take time for ourselves whatever that might be that we enjoy and we need to stop trying to fit the "perfect" mold. It simply doesn't exist and will prove to be destructive to us and those around us. We need to love and accept ourselves for who we are and accept those darn imperfections. So let's all go to the salon and relax a little more :).