Bubble Therapy

Self-care is thought of as self-ish if you’ve got deadlines and donut sales. It is difficult to find a moment for yourself wedged between homework and housework, bath times and bedtimes, bible study, and quarterly conference.   This concept of self-care is relatively new to me.  If you did not grow up enjoying the freedom of generational wealth, then I suspect you may have a similar testimony.   In order to acquire things that were not the necessities, I had to go to work.    I wanted to go to cheerleading camp.  That required special shoes and socks and pom-poms and pins and things.  If I wanted to have those things, I would have to pay for them myself because it simply was not in my parents’ budget.  So, I went to work at age 14, washing dishes at a local restaurant and cleaning rooms at the motel on the beach.

We work long hours, then we plan family outings so that we don’t lose connection with those we love, but even that becomes work. We find ourselves so exhausted that self-care seems optional.   Self-care is not just going to the nail salon or taking a hike.  Those are good things, but there is more.  Self-care is also paying attention to your mind and spirit.   What that looks like for you can only be determined by you.  I can only tell you what it looks like for me.

Blowing Bubbles.

I had to find a way to care for my mind and spirit after experiencing a series of unfortunate events. Pre-vaccine COVID, losing my good friend to cancer in 2021, then my sister and my father within three months of each other last year.  It put some scars and weight on my heart.  After a particularly difficult therapy session (faith without works is dead), I went outside and blew bubbles.  As I watched the bubbles float up into the air, I felt the weight begin to lift from my heart. 

Blowing bubbles helped me release the stresses of the day.  The tension in my mind gave way, and creativity flowed through revelation and became a poem.  Blowing bubbles became my self-care.  I blew them in the morning as rush hour traffic zoomed by.  I blew them when the school bus returned its rambunctious riders safely home.  I blew them whenever I needed to release the thoughts that carried the weight that hovered like pending rain and corroded pain.  I blew them so much that my neighbor gifted me with a kit to blow giant bubbles.  I collect machines that blow them continuously, wands in different shapes and sizes. I have big containers and small containers of bubble solution.  I give them away to kids and to adults.  You see, bubbles are like troubles.  They capture your attention as they float through your life and create cataclysmic prisms that swirl around your mind and collect light. Then they suddenly pop.   It reminds me that troubles, like bubbles, are only temporary.

 I’m so glad bubbles don’t last always.

For more information, contact: Rev. Dierdre’ R. Parker-Rowson, Entertainment_Arts@Starofzion.org