This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Practice Radical Self Care with Shelly Tygielski | 302

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

We’ve been told self-care is selfish, indulgent—even unnecessary. That being a “good woman” means putting everyone else first and clapping for ourselves last. But what if real self-care isn’t a luxury—it’s a radical, world-shifting, life-saving act of rebellion?In this episode, I’m joined by Shelly Tygielski, author of Sit Down to Rise Up and founder of Pandemic of Love, a mutual aid movement that’s provided over $100 million in direct aid. Named one of Mindful.org’s “12 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement,” Shelly is here to help us rethink everything we thought we knew about self-care.We talk about the toxic messages that keep women burned out and worn down, the myth of positive thinking, and how showing up for ourselves—fully and unapologetically—is the foundation of showing up for anyone else. Because self-care isn’t about escape. It’s about power. It’s about choosing yourself on purpose.In This Episode, We Cover:✅ Why self-care is an act of activism—not selfishness✅ The real reason “positive vibes only” can be toxic✅ How to opt out of burnout culture and still get sh*t done✅ The difference between self-soothing and true self-care✅ Creating community care alongside personal care✅ What it really looks like to walk away from the tightrope (and the circus)Self-care isn’t selfish. It’s a revolution. And it starts with you.Connect with Shelly: Website: http://www.shellytygielski.comBook: https://a.co/d/j8gsf7MIG: http://www.instagram.com/mindfulskatergirlFB: http://www.facebook.com/shellymeditationRelated Podcast Episodes:Why We Brush Off The Idea Of Self-Care with Dr. Christine Coleman | 223156 / Cell Care with Dr. Monisha BhanoteHow To Eat Lunch with Cheryl K. Johnson | 277Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/tiww ! #squarepodShare the Love:If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I'm Nicole Kalil and you're listening to the This Is Women's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women's work in the world today with you as the decider. Whatever feels real and true and right for you, that's your way of doing woman's work. And that is meant to be motivating and inspiring, personal and global. But it can also feel a little overwhelming and daunting, right? Like I'm the decider?

How the hell am I supposed to know and who has the time to figure out what feels true and real and right. And even if I did know, how do I do that without facing a barrage of expectations and other people's opinions? And here's the thing. We all have our own journeys, paths, and processes. But one way we may all want to consider is self-care. And not the self-care that's been hashtagged to oblivion, plastered on overpriced candles, and turned into a marketing juggernaut.

Yet, despite all the talk about bubble baths and spa days, most of us are still running on fumes. So, what if self-care wasn't about escaping your life for an hour of me time, but about transforming your life and possibly the lives of others by showing up for yourself in a radically different way. What if self-care wasn't selfish and wasn't for sale, but was instead a profound act of activism, connection, and courage? Think about it.

When was the last time you felt deeply cared for by yourself? And what would be possible if you did? What if you walked into your relationships, your career, and your passions already cared for? How would that change just about everything? Because the truth is, many of us have bought into the lie that self-care is selfish, indulgent, or worse, a luxury. Which has us meeting everyone else's needs while putting ours last.

We're praised for being selfless and feel judged when we prioritize our own well-being. It feels like an impossible tightrope act, but here's a thought. What if the most radical act of self-care is to stop even showing up to the circus? I'm not the expert, but I found us a guest who is. Shelley Tegelski is the powerhouse in the world of radical self-care. She's the author of Sit Down to Rise Up and founder of Pandemic of Love,

a global mutual aid organization that's rewritten the script on giving and receiving support. Called one of the 12 most powerful women in the mindfulness movement by mindful.org, Shelley combines mindfulness with activism in ways that are as impactful as they are inspiring. Today we'll talk about how self-care can be a form of activism while positive thinking can be toxic and what it really means to show up for yourself and your community. Shelley, welcome to the show.

I want to start with this idea of self-care and activism because you call yourself or describe yourself as a self-care activist. What does that even mean? Yeah. You know, first of all, self-care, and Audre Lorde actually penned this, self-care is a radical act, a political act of defiance. It is a radical act of activism. And a self-care activist is someone who is not just pursuing self-care for individualistic reasons, but really looking to build community and weave safety nets that actually change the paradigm of the type of, and I kind of alluded to this in my intro, and please feel free to challenge

or provide a different perspective to anything that I said, but how is what you're talking about different than how we're seeing self-care talked about all over the place today? Well, self-care and the concept of self-care, like many other kind of things that have to do with wellness or philanthropy, the concept of what charity actually is, for example, have been hijacked by industry, by capitalism.

And so what we have right now and what we've been seeing for a really long time, for decades in fact, and I would say that, you know, as somebody who is kind of studying when these shifts started to take place, the last wave of when self-care kind of became the self-care industrial complex or the part of the wellness industrial complex was after 9-11. Around the same time of 9-11, people started to talk about self-care again. And then after that, it became incredibly hijacked by people trying to sell you quick fixes and the seven steps to do this and the five steps to do that and self-care in five minutes, et cetera. And so the self-care that I'm talking about

really doesn't cost money. It has nothing to do with needing to have a certain socioeconomic status or the ability to purchase something. It's really about connection to yourself, and it's really about connection to yourself and it's mostly about connection to others. So when we're talking about self care, there's a misnomer there, right? Like the word self is in there. That's misleading because people think, oh, self as in I, me, the individualistic self, right? But actually, when we're talking about self-care and when

I speak about it in the book, and people I think who are really involved in kind of grassroots activism, people who are involved in building mutual aid and community, are speaking about self-care in terms of communal care. And we still use the terminology of self-care because if we say communal care, people go, huh? And they don't really understand what that means and also how it can benefit them. So it's really important to sort of widen the aperture, widen the scope of what we think of as self-care, as being individualistic, and shifting it

into a definition that really means communal care. Okay, I'm wildly curious about this. My brain makes the connection of when we care for ourselves, then we, and we know who we are and we're playing to our strengths and bring our authentic selves to the table, that we have the higher possibility and probability

of impacting others and our community at large. Is that what you're talking about or am I still kind of in this vein of like take care of yourself first so you can take care of others? Yeah, well, it's both and, right? They're not mutually exclusive. In other words, yes, of course, we absolutely do need to put that proverbial overused cliche

of putting your oxygen mask on first so that you can then tend to others. But the truth of the matter is, is that there are times in our lives when we're just in a state of complete shock or we're in burnout or teetering on burnout, or we're in such a place that we can't even remember to do that for ourselves or we can't motivate ourselves even if we do remember to do that. So we'll give you a concrete example. Right. And I talk about this in the book actually. I talk about being post-divorce Having a toddler son and recently having had been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that

temporarily left me blind and that I've been actually tending to and struggling with for the last two decades at this point. And at that moment where I was really feeling at my lowest, I was trying to overcompensate as many parents do, especially, you know, women, moms, in trying to overcompensate for that failure by being so present for my son to make sure that he's okay, right? So tending to him and really felt very lost myself. So I felt lost in all aspects of my life. I felt like a complete failure, as many people sometimes do, even if a divorce is amicable or the best thing for you. And I was really struggling health-wise. And I needed help. I needed to be able to lean on a community and I,'t afford to wait for people to show up for me.

I actually had to do one of the hardest things I ever had to do and I think that a lot of people struggle with this and that is to ask for help in a really tangible way. And so what I proceeded to do was to invite women to my house, moms from my son's school, people that were acquaintances and some that were really good friends. Just like we can manage to somehow get together for book clubs or we can manage to get together for a fun night out or for wine or coffee breaks or what have you. This was really an intervention that I kind of created for myself in a way. And I blurred it out in this group of all sorts of people, people who again who knew me well

and some who didn't know me as well and said I really need help. I am struggling. I do not have time. You mentioned in your intro that time is such a commodity. We can't get it back. Don't have time for myself. I don't have time to put the oxygen mask on. In fact, I don't even know where the oxygen mask is. It's probably in some box somewhere that still hasn't been unpacked and I really need help. These women mobilized for me in such a real way where they helped me unpack and they helped me create a schedule where twice a week somebody was taking my son to school in the morning so that I would have time in the morning to go for a walk or do yoga or just tend to myself,

have some space. The poet Judy Brown says in such a beautiful, long, eloquent poem, but there's a great line and the poem is called Fire and it's that the space between the logs is where the fire grows. And so I needed space. I needed there to be space to be able to tend to myself and just have a moment to recalibrate because I was in this constant default mode

of just reaction, reaction, reaction. And there was no time to actually sit back this constant default mode of just reaction, reaction, reaction. And there was no time to actually sit back and pause for a moment and think about, how do I want to respond? How do I make sure that I'm not just reacting both physiologically, biologically, in all the ways, mentally, and actually having a moment to just recalibrate, even if it's in tiny little steps that in aggregate over time,

actually start to move the needle. Okay, so I feel like several little light bulbs went off while you were talking for me. First, I think I made the connection of what you were saying with communal care, because I think when we think of self-care, we think I made the connection of what you were saying with communal care, because I think when we think of self-care, we think about it being something we do with and for ourselves.

It's almost a lonely act, which often when we need self-care, what we're missing is connection, is space and time, is community. And so the light bulb was how much our community is imperative for a lot of reasons in this act of self care. And I'd never made that connection before. So thank you for that. I also think sometimes the way self care is being positioned, I'll just say out there, it feels like another fucking thing to do, right? It's like, oh God, there's another thing on my to-do list and that is the very last thing

that I need. And self-care sounds like it takes a lot of time and time is the commodity we like as you. So what it sounds like you're saying is we need community to create the time, the opportunity, the... The conditions. Exactly. Okay. The conditions that we are required to even begin to practice self-care.

That's right. To do it consistently. To do it mindfully. To do it in a way that doesn't feel like an absolute drag, but actually begins to be woven into your life as a tapestry is woven. So I talk also about self-care as rhythms in our life, right? And how we can really design self-care to fit the rhythms that are daily, that are seasonal, that are annual for us, right? And I think that a lot of times, like you said, if we're looking at self-care as another thing on our to-do list, i.e. oh, I didn't work out today,

you know? And then we're now feeling guilty, we're feeling bad about ourselves, we're now adding secondary suffering to that primary suffering of I didn't do this thing. And that really is ineffective completely. I think when we look at what are the daily rhythms of our lives, where can we create, as I said earlier, the space between the logs, rather than thinking of it as these inordinate huge chunks of time that have to happen on a daily basis, how do we think about things in the form of a rhythm? So if I just look at my life on a daily basis, and even maybe a smaller chunk, if I look at my life at three intervals per day, my mornings, the middle of the day and my evenings. Where am I able to, without completely shifting from one moment to the next, right? And this is why many resolutions don't work, by the

way, because things are so drastic, but where can I easily start to shift some of those rhythms? And how do I sort of begin to build this snowball? How do those days and those rhythms in small aggregates and quantities and minor shifts begin to actually create a shift on a weekly basis and on a monthly basis and on a seasonal basis, et cetera? I get into this in the book because for me, it really was incremental. It had to be. There was no way that I was going to suddenly create these enormous shifts in my life because it just wasn't possible unless suddenly my community was able to provide me with full-time

childcare, unlimited funds and resources, like a private chef, a driver, et cetera. Like it's just, that really is just an, and I think that's what we're striving for. That's what the world is trying to sell us on. And that's why we're always feeling so deficient. We're feeling inefficient. We're feeling like complete, you know, failures when it comes to tending to ourselves and why our self-care is so inconsistent because we don't have that safety net.

We don't have the ability to say, I couldn't get to this this week or for many days in a row and let me figure out what the obstacle is. Why couldn't I get to this? You know, and can somebody help me remove that obstacle if I can't do it myself? And I will also say that, you know, the next step, the next iteration of that, and this is something that I was so happy to be able to do

when I came out of my fog, like 16, 18 months after that initial self-intervention, if you will, is you're able to turn around and say, wow, I finally feel like I'm not treading water anymore, and now I have the space to be able to support somebody else. I think because this is such a radical and different expression of self-care than we're hearing, I would love maybe some examples of these daily seasonal annual, especially as you said earlier, that don't involve great deals of time or unlimited funds. What are some ways or some examples of practices of self-care? So fast forward to seven or eight years after that kind of incredibly low point that I had just shared with you. At that point, I was remarried.

I was working in the corporate world. My son at that time was in middle school. I had an incredibly intense job, but also a really long commute every single day. intense job, but also a really long commute every single day. And every single day, I would feel that morning rush. I know that a lot of people listening to this would be like, yeah, we get it. Where you're rushing to get yourself ready for work, rushing to make sure that your kid or kids are ready. You're making breakfast, you have to deal with making lunch, and you have to get out on the road on time. And lo and behold, of course, 50% of the time, there's always some sort of something happening on the road and on the highway that prevents you from actually getting where you're going

on time. And so there's that morning stress, right? And at the end of the day, I would experience that as well. Every single day, I would come home and I would bring the residue with me into the house, right? I would literally just be all day long from the moment I woke up completely stressed out and freaking out and on this timer and then on my way home, same situation. I would get home, I would park in the driveway and walk into the house.

Of course, this may resonate with some of your listeners or even with you. One of the first questions that you get when you walk in after a long day is, what's for dinner? And that would just completely set me off too. And so what I decided to start doing is create these like metaphorical mud rooms in my life, mud rooms in my life, where before I actually would enter from one room to the next or one task to the next, I would just take a minute, a minute, like I would literally talk to my phone and say, hey, put on a minute timer. And I would just pause and recalibrate. And sometimes I would do like a breathing exercise, but sometimes I would just sit there in silence with the, you know, car engine off

before I actually walked into the house, so that I wasn't bringing all of that residue into the house with me and kind of tracking all that mud in. So think of it as a, right? That's your mud room. And when we have a mud room, what do we do? We take our boots off, we take off our dirty shoes, our dirty coat. We don't track all of that mud into the house or into work or into these other types of these sacred spaces or places that we hope are safe spaces for us. And we certainly want them to be that for other people as well. And so I started to really just incorporate these like one minute spaces into my life, even before at work going into a meeting. Rather than rushing from like I'm answering emails to now I'm going into the next meeting,

or I just got off a phone call and now I'm going into the next meeting, or I just got off a phone call and now I'm going to respond to these emails. From task to task to task, I started to create these little vignettes, these little windows. And that, again, in the aggregate really started to create huge shifts for me because I was able to show up in a very different way just by being conscious of like, what am I bringing from the day into this moment, into the future? What am I kind of dragging along with me that I can actually let go of and just hang on that hook and Maybe never pick it up again, or maybe you know pick it up again tomorrow. I Love the metaphorical mudroom. I love the concept of this my therapist actually

Taught me something similar at the end of the day I have a 10-minute buffer and it's a little bit of like what do I need to let go of from work? and it's a little bit of like, what do I need to let go of from work? Whether it's put it on my to-do list tomorrow or write a note or just like, okay, I need to like, let's set this aside. I'm not going to solve this problem tonight type thing. And then how do I want to show up at home? And I don't drive, I work from home. So it's literally like a 30 second walk and it happens to be through my mud room. So I love that, but, you know, sort of this cleaning off of one and sort of recalibrating who you are and who you wanna be for the next. I've never thought about doing it in the morning.

And I think every person listening can relate to that chaos at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. So I love this. And one of the things that I really like about it is there is a proactive element to it. Whereas I think a lot of times the way we're sold self-care as a reactive thing, like, oh, life is so hard and you're so exhausted that you need to escape, as opposed to doing things that put us in a better position to create a life that we don't feel like we regularly need to escape from.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, life is hard. Let's just put that on the table, right? It can be very hard. It can be blissful for sure. But life is on the daily, on the regular. When we sort of look at the whole can be, have its challenging moments on a

daily basis. And so if we don't, if our default mode is to just, you know, create these pockets of escape every now and then, that doesn't work. Because, you know, and studies, by the way, scientific studies have proven that that doesn't work. That actually, you know, especially if you're teetering even on burnout, like you're, you go on vacation, it takes you like a day for your kind of vagus nerve just to like recalibrate and get, for you to mentally get into a good state,

for you to physiologically get in a good state. And then as soon as you get back to your routine, if your routine is not in check, if your routine does not actually support the type of life that you want to be living, then you're just within 48 hours hijacking your system again. Right. So how important is it for us to regularly check in with ourselves of like, what do I need right now?

Because there's such an easy default to like what other people tell us we should be doing, right? Like other people tell us, oh, we should move or meditate or breathe or go to the spa or buy this product, right? It's so easy to get caught up in it. So any advice as to how we can check in with ourselves with what we need on any given day, season or year? Well, I check in with myself like an inordinate,

I don't even know if I can give you a number, but times a day. It really just has become a habit that I've cultivated because I grew up and for a very long time was a people pleaser. My love language is acts of service, which is not shocking if you look in my body of work. But ultimately, if you're constantly looking for validation on the outside and you want a people please and you're serving others, you're forgetting to service yourself.

I would take on so many roles and so many tasks that I really should not have taken on. And I, you know, even even meetings, you know, like I've gotten so much better about I used to take meetings, back to back to back to back to back without building like space in for myself, or saying no, you know what, I'm carving out like these windows where there's absolutely no meetings that can be scheduled for me during this time at work, because I need time to actually do work and to think and to have

like breathing room and space, you know. So you start to like create these non-negotiables for you. But the way you kind of get there is to check in with yourself. And I actually have this habit and I always have, but I actually really, I put one or both hands on my heart center and I do that throughout the day actually. I've always found it soothing and it's interesting because my mother and I were recently talking about the fact

that I've been doing this for the greater part of my life. So I think it was just something that was ingrained in me from like a really, or was soothing to me from a very young age. But I tend to do that. And I tend to just like pause for a minute and say like, what do I need in this moment? What am I feeling into in this moment? And I think so many of us are conditioned to, again, react or do for others or be so heart-centered that we kind of forget that we have this other really incredible resource available to us, which is our gut check. And so many of us just don't tap into that often enough. So I would say

wherever you can, you know, build in these like moments to check in with yourself, it doesn't take long, it could be a 15 second check in actually. And, and and listen for a moment because when you get quiet, things actually can get incredibly loud. Um, you know, and you could do this when you're even, you know, on a conference call or on a zoom call. Like I think also, we're also so conditioned to like respond to things right away, you know, and, and, and not pause for a minute and just think. And it's okay to do that too. Like when you're in meetings, you know,

to just give yourself that moment to say, what do I really think about this right now? You know, how do I feel about this at this moment? There's a sense of urgency in our society that I think is, in many cases, really self-imposed or has just been ingrained in us, but is actually not there. It's not real. It feels like this could be the foundation of both self-care and authenticity, right? This developing the practice of just checking in with yourself. How do I feel?

What do I need? And I would imagine at least some of the times the answer to the question of what I need is I need some help, as you said earlier. Any tips for asking for help? Look, asking for help is incredibly hard. And especially if you are the type of person that is the helper. And that was really the case for me, where I was like, wait a minute, I'm always the one that's like showing up for other people. And this doesn't feel right. It feels strange. I would say that honestly, like, if you're nervous about asking for help or what you need, first and foremost, go back to checking in with yourself. What do I need right now?

What do I need right now? I think sometimes we may think that we need help and then we're so ambiguous about it and then we get frustrated when people don't show up for us. I think the more tangible you can be, the more specific you can be in what it is that you need help with. And I don't necessarily mean that it has to be like a specific task right I mean like identify the obstacle this is the obstacle that I'm facing this is the challenge that I'm facing at this moment I need help with ideas to you know eliminate that challenge or help me overcome this obstacle or alleviate you know some of the the stressors that it is creating in my life. And these are some of the stressors that it's creating.

So it's really about like just sitting down, taking the time to actually fully write down what it is that you need, where the deficiencies are, and giving people enough tools to be able to help you. And I think sometimes we avoid asking for help for a lot of the reasons you said, and because there is this feeling that we're a burden or that we're inconveniencing other people.

And something you said earlier, I think could be really helpful to remember in these moments is this is seasonal and reciprocal. So there will come a time where you're in a position where you get to help people. And I think maybe having that come from will lessen that feeling or we just need to practice setting it aside, regardless of what. But Shelley, I could ask you 1 million more questions. Unfortunately, we're out of time and I know people are going to want to find you and learn more. So friend, you can find and follow Shelley

on Instagram at mindful skater girl and you can get her your hands on her books, sit down to rise up. We're going to put the links to those as well as all the other ways to follow Shelley in show notes. Shelley, thank you for eye-opening and compelling conversation. So much good stuff in here. Thank you so much, Nicole. I appreciate you having me. Okay, friend, I'm gonna close us out with this. If self-care is a truly radical act,

one that goes beyond bubble baths and spa days, then it is also a deeply personal and communal act of courage and connection. It's showing up for yourself in ways that feel real and true, even if the world tells you it's selfish or unnecessary. It's walking away from the tightrope and the circus, the constant pool of expectations and opinions, and deciding powerfully, unapologetically,

to care for yourself and each other. And here's the thing, this isn't just about you. When you show up already cared for, you show up better for the people and the causes you love. You break cycles of burnout and create space for more joy, more energy, more authenticity. If today's conversation with Shelley has sparked something in you, don't stop here.

Check out episodes 223, where we talk about why we brush off the idea of self-care, episode 147 on getting your needs met, or even episode 267 on how to breathe, which, let's be real, may be the most fundamental act of self-care. You'll find all those linked in show notes so you can continue exploring what this looks like in your life. Bottom line, and hear me when I say this, self-care isn't selfish. It isn't indulgent or a luxury. It's necessary.

It's revolutionary. And you know, I'm ready for a revolution. How about you? You, being cared for by you and each other might just be the work that changes everything. And that is woman's work.