Stop Telling Women "You Can't Pour From an Empty Cup"

Listen. I know we all mean well here. The intent is usually to encourage women — often moms — to take better care of themselves instead of pushing past a breaking point by over-serving others at the expense of caring for themselves well.

I’ve been guilty of saying it myself in the past, but telling women “you can’t pour from an empty cup” is toxic as hell.

It’s POISON. And I’ll tell you why…

But first, I’ve gotta come clean, friends.

A few months ago, I realized that I pay an awful lot of people to take care of me. I have an awesome, active myofascial release session every 2-3 weeks, acupuncture every other Thursday, talk therapy every 4-6 weeks (or more frequently when life feels really hard), yoga classes several times a month, and a quarterly appointment with my naturopath.

I’m deeply grateful for these practitioners and my work with them — they help me stay (relatively) pain-free, move with greater ease, connect more mindfully to my own heart, recognize when my boundaries are being ignored, and honor my true limits. They provide a safe space to process my emotions and learn how to shift out of patterns that aren’t serving me.

When I got real with myself, I discovered that I’ve essentially been trying to outsource my self-care.

And the truth is that no amount of therapy, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, life coaching, reiki, or yoga will make it possible for you not to need to actually take care of your own damn self most of the time.

What I’ve learned over the past 6-ish months is that no one can really take care of me other than ME (well, shit) and that I’ve been running a serious self-care deficit (surprise, surprise — 5 to 10 hours of showing up in someone else’s office or studio isn’t enough self-care for the month).

My personal self-care deficit has looked like: a lack of quality sleep, too little movement, not eating often enough + eating in a way that I know doesn’t allow me to feel my best, the absence of large chunks of unscheduled down time, and a lack of regular indulgence in diverse types of pleasure.

Honestly, up until a week or two ago, I kind of felt like garbage most of the time.

While I’m still seeing many of my practitioners regularly (because those appointments are an extremely important piece of caring for myself well), I’m also taking greater personal responsibility for my self-care.

Some of the things that I’ll be using/doing to support me in that effort: (1) Maverick — our new puppy — just started going to doggie daycare two days a week. (2) I’m working towards a 10:30 PM bedtime so that I can actually feel RESTED when I get up around 7:30/7:45 AM — I need a lot of sleep, y’all. (3) I’ll be signing back up for a Y membership in the next week or two so that I can start lap swimming regularly again. (4) More meal prep and planning ahead — because I love steel cut oats for breakfast and homemade soup for lunch, but that can’t happen unless I make the time for it.

But why did I create this self-care deficit and end up trying to completely outsource my self-care?

I think a large part of it was because I was using other people and my ability to serve or care for them as the central justification for taking care of myself…

Body-based modalities = making sure my body is stable and pain-free enough to work with my clients and students. Therapy = partially because I want to pass on less of my own woundedness to any future kiddos we might have. Yoga = chilling the heck out so that I’m not an irritable monster with my sweet and wonderful husband.

You get the picture.

Which leads me right back to where we started — why is it so toxic to tell women “you can’t pour from an empty cup?”

What “you can’t pour from an empty cup” really says is that the whole reason you give yourself what you need is so that you can give others what THEY need and, in this way, OTHER PEOPLE become the permission slip for your own self-care.

The lie that our culture has told women for hundreds (thousands?) of years is this: Your value and your worthiness of connection, love, and belonging lies in your capacity to serve. To care for others.