Why Creative Expression Is the Self-Care Practice You're Not Talking About (But Should Be)

Self-care has become a loaded term. It's been commodified, aestheticized, and reduced to a shorthand for bath bombs and skincare routines — which is fine, but also a little limiting when you consider what genuine self-care actually does.

Real self-care is anything that restores your capacity to function well — that replenishes what daily life depletes. Rest does this. Connection does this. Movement does this.

And creative expression does this, in ways that are distinct from any of the others — and that too many people have written off as frivolous, impractical, or 'not for them.'