The holiday season can carry a complicated mix of anticipation, pressure, grief, memory, and joy. If you’re caring for someone, whether through end-of-life care, supporting someone through health challenges, or working professionally in the care sector, this time of year can place extra strain on your energy, attention, and emotions.
Self-care isn’t a luxury. It’s a vital part of sustainable care. When people turn to you for support, your capacity to accompany them with clarity, steadiness, and compassion depends on how you’re tending to yourself.
Self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate
There’s a common assumption that self-care requires long stretches of time or expensive wellness routines. In practice, the most effective self-care is usually simple, repeatable, and small enough to fit around your existing commitments.
This might include:
- A few minutes of conscious breathing between tasks
- A short walk or five minutes outdoors
- A warm drink taken slowly
- Noticing where you’re holding tension in your body
- Saying no when you need a boundary
- Reaching out to someone who replenishes you
- Having a power nap or meditating
- Getting a good night’s sleep
Small practices, repeated consistently, can help restore a sense of grounding.
It’s normal to feel many things at once
Caring for someone can surface feelings that don’t line up neatly with the season. You may feel grateful and tired at the same time. You may look forward to the holidays whilst carrying a quiet ache about changes in your circumstances. You may feel stretched between your responsibilities and your own needs.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Acknowledging how you feel, without judgment, is an essential part of self-care. Emotional honesty supports resilience.
You’re allowed to have limits
Saying no, rescheduling, or lowering expectations isn’t a failure but a reminder that you’re human. Your wellbeing matters. You matter, and you have choices. And it’s far easier to provide thoughtful, consistent care when you’re not running on empty.
I often use the analogy that we are a bit like a bank account: if we keep spending without making regular deposits, we will go bankrupt, and our accounts will be closed. Taking small, regular deposits is the way to sustain your caregiving and your wellbeing.
If you’re caring for someone at the end of life, the holiday season can demand even more of you. Notice when your energy is thinning, when you’re carrying stress in your body, or when you’re emotionally overstretched. Checking in with yourself regularly can make the difference between coping and quietly burning out.
Connection is a form of self-care
Self-care isn’t only something you do alone. Staying connected with people who understand the nature of your work or your circumstances can be stabilising. Conversations with peers, mentors, or other carers can help reduce isolation, normalise what you’re feeling, and remind you that you’re not carrying everything by yourself.
If you’re a professional working in end-of-life care, reach out to colleagues who know the terrain. If you’re supporting someone in your personal life, consider local carers’ groups or online communities. Carer Gateway offers information about support services across Australia.
Make space for rest
Rest isn’t a reward; it’s a biological need. In care work, especially in end-of-life settings, rest helps restore your capacity to be present with others.
Rest can look like:
- Sleep (the obvious one, but often neglected)
- Time without doing or deciding anything
- A few minutes with your phone on silent
- Gentle movement
- A pause between tasks
- A ritual that helps you shift from work mode to home mode
- Breathwork or meditation, mindfulness or listening to music
Your wellbeing is part of the care you provide
At Preparing the Way, we see every day how much carers, both professional and informal, give of themselves. We also know the difference it makes when they have access to community, training, and support.
As you move through the holiday season, we invite you to centre your wellbeing alongside the care you offer others. Notice what helps you feel steadier. Notice what drains you. Offer yourself patience, compassion, and space to breathe.
You deserve the same care and attention you extend so generously to others.
Each of us at Preparing the Way sends you our wishes for a gentle, restorative, and kind holiday time, and we invite you to make some little deposits just for you, because you so deserve it.
Thank you for giving of yourself in service to others, whether as a family member, friend, volunteer, doula, community member, or support worker. We are all in this together, and please know how appreciated you are.
Helen Callanan
Founder & Lead Educator
Helen is a practising end of life doula and the Founder, Managing Director, and Lead Educator of Preparing the Way. With nearly 40 years of experience in traditional Chinese medicine and Reiki and working with the aging, very ill, and dying, Helen brings profound insight into health and the ‘circle of life’