Self-Care Saturday

    

     Self-Care Saturday is more than a cute hashtag. It’s a gentle declaration that you are worthy of rest, intention, and renewal before the week asks anything of you. Saturdays hold a unique kind of permission. The rush eases, the clock loosens its grip, and your nervous system finally gets a chance to exhale. Self-care isn’t indulgence; it’s maintenance. It’s how we return to ourselves after pouring into work, family, purpose, and people. When we choose self-care, we are choosing ourselves.

    Self-Care Saturday can look beautifully different for everyone. For some, it’s a slow morning with tea, prayer, journaling, or a gratitude practice that recenters the heart. For others, it’s movement; walking, stretching, dancing, or heading to the gym to release stress stored in the body. 

    Creative care might mean reading, painting, writing, or tending to a passion project that feeds your spirit. 

    Social care could be brunch with a trusted friend, while sensory care might be a long bath, a skincare ritual, or simply sitting in silence. Each activity carries benefits: lowered stress, improved mood, clearer thinking, emotional regulation, and a deeper sense of connection to yourself.

    What makes Self-Care Saturday powerful is intention. When you pause to ask, What do I need today?—you begin practicing self-trust. Over time, these small, consistent choices build resilience, prevent burnout, and remind you that your well-being matters just as much as your productivity. Let Saturday be your weekly reset. Not to become more, but to remember who you already are. 💜

Self-care is not selfish.

Small Dignity Tasks

    

    There's a phrase I've been returning to lately. Small dignity task. It names something many of us do instinctively but rarely honor. A small dignity task is a simple, grounded action that restores a sense of self when life feels overwhelming, uncertain, or discouraging. It's not about productivity or progress in the traditional sense. It's about dignity. About reminding yourself, I still matter. I can care for myself even when things feel unstable. When big plans feel heavy and clarity feels far away, these small acts become anchors. They don't fix everything but they help you stay connected to who you are while you're waiting for things to shift.

    Small dignity tasks are especially important during seasons of discouragement, financial strain, grief, transition, or decision fatigue. When motivation is low and pressure is high. They're for the days when getting through feels like enough. When you're tired of pushing but not ready to give up. These tasks are not about "doing more"; they're about doing one kind thing for yourself that reestablishes self-respect and steadiness. They help regulate your nervous system, quiet the internal noise, and create just enough emotional traction to keep moving forward, without forcing answers or pretending everything is fine.

Because let's be honest, everything is not always fine.

    Here are a few examples of small dignity tasks—simple, accessible actions that gently restore balance:

• Making your bed or clearing one small surface
• Drinking a full glass of water before checking your phone
• Taking a shower with intention (music, silence, or deep breaths)
• Stepping outside for fresh air, even for two minutes
• Sending one honest email or message you've been avoiding
• Preparing a nourishing meal or snack instead of skipping food
• Writing one sentence in a journal: "Today feels ___."
• Changing into clean, comfortable clothes
• Lighting a candle or sitting quietly for a moment of stillness

    None of these are grand. And that's the point. Small dignity tasks are quiet declarations that you are worthy of care right now, not later. Before the breakthrough, before the stability, before everything makes sense. They are how we tend to ourselves while life is unfolding.

Which dignity tasks are you most likely to try when things are not fine?

Yvette Flunder (Orginal Vocalist) "Thank You Lord" By Walter Hawkins

Releasing the Pressure to Niche Down

    

    For a long time, I heard the same advice over and over again: niche down. Make it smaller. Make it clearer. Make it easier to explain. I thought my niche was simply self-publishing and writing. And while that's true, it was never the whole truth.

    What I didn't realize then was how much pressure that advice carried. It made me feel like I had to flatten my experience to fit inside a category. Like I had to choose one lane when my life had clearly taken many. Writing wasn't separate from healing. Publishing wasn't separate from grief. Coaching wasn't separate from lived experience. They were all informing each other at the same time.

    Now I see it differently. My niche isn't a single service or skill, it's the intersection of my story, my voice, and the season I'm willing to write from. It's creativity shaped by recovery. It's guidance rooted in lived experience. It's helping others give language to what they've survived and what they're still becoming.

    So no, I didn't niche down.

    I named the whole of who I am.

    And that's when everything began to make sense.

Book Name Change | From Sumthing Special To Infused

Creative Block - Epiphany - I Am The Niche

    I didn't sit down to create a series when I wrote Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying. I sat down to be honest. What started as one blog post became six, including this one. It's not because I planned it that way, but because something in me needed room to breathe. Somewhere between patience, honesty, trying, and tears, I had an epiphany: healing doesn't arrive all at once. It unfolds when we stay present with ourselves.

    Grief doesn't ask politely for space. It reshapes identity, disrupts rhythm, and forces you to move at a pace you didn't choose. Over the past couple of years, illness, recovery, and loss have all asked something different of me. Patience became an act of compassion. Honesty became a lifeline. Trying, on the days when motivation was gone, became enough. And crying stopped feeling like a setback and started feeling like release. These weren't separate lessons. They were connected. They were lived.

    For a long time, I believed creativity had to look a certain way, finished, polished, productive. But this season taught me something gentler and truer. Writing recently hasn't been for performance, but for peace. I didn't force clarity. I allowed truth. I stayed present with my grief and my creativity, without asking either one to disappear so the other could exist.

    Months ago, I saw a creator on TikTok say, "You are the niche." At the time, it sounded encouraging. Now it feels undeniable. This process magnified that truth for me. My lived experience, my pauses, my healing, my uncertainty, my persistence, is not something I need to package or overcome before it's valuable. It is the work. I am the niche.

    I draw where I am. I write where I am. I create from the place where my feet are planted, not from an imagined finish line. And in doing so, I've learned this: my voice didn't disappear during grief, it softened. My vision didn't blur, it widened. And my victory isn't loud or flashy. It's steady. It's real. It's choosing myself, again and again.

    I've also learned that while I have many things to cry about, I also have so much to look forward to.

In All Things Give Thanks,

Arlinda

Believers City | 11 AM Sunday Service | January 25, 2026

Fred Hammond & RFC - Just to Be Close to You

Same God | feat. Jonsal Barrientes & Brandon Lake | Elevation Worship

Creative Block - Cry When You Need To

 

    This season of my life has definitely had its share of tears. There are days when the tears are uncontrollable. There are days when I don't cry at all and then days later I'm in tears all over again. Especially after all that I've been through with my illness and thinking, okay... things are getting better right? And then my father passed unexpectedly and the tears returned. It felt like I never really got a break from sadness and heartache. 

Crying is not a setback. It’s a release. Holding everything in doesn’t make you stronger, it makes the weight heavier. Grief needs somewhere to go, and tears are often the safest place for it to land. They don’t mean you’re undone; they mean you’re processing. You're processing what was. You're processing letting go. 

When I was in the hospital people would come to visit almost daily.  Every time someone would walk into my room I thought, "Oh my God!" & I would immediately begin to cry. Visitors came daily. Some were such a surprise. I would simply cry at the sight of them because it was overwhelming. Knowing that people had thought enough about me to come and visit me at the hospital or hang out with me in the hospital made me reel so vulnerable. Little did I know that by Spring my tears would increase.

I remember the night that my son called me and told me that my father had passed. I remember freezing in that moment. Hearing him and processing the information caused me to freeze in that moment. Once we got to the house, to wait for the coroner to come and to remove my father's body from our childhood home, the tears began to fall. I recall standing on the sidewalk in front of the house as we were saying our goodbyes and gathering around him as a family. Those tears were continuous on all of our faces.

I’ve learned that letting myself cry clears space inside me. It doesn’t solve everything, but it softens the pressure. Sometimes after the tears, I can breathe a little easier. Sometimes I can think more clearly. And sometimes all it does is acknowledge the truth of what I’ve been carrying and that alone is enough for that day.