what paint by numbers taught me about selfcare

It was supposed to be a fun project to help me explore selfcare through creativity, but just a few moments in and I wanted to throw the whole thing in the trash.

I’ll start from the beginning. My colleague and friend Colleen sent me such a thoughtful holiday gift last year: a paint-by-numbers canvas of our sweet dog Zoey. Colleen had the image made from a photo of Zoey in her favorite spot, laying among the perennials near our front steps, where she would dig a bed beneath the shrubs there to stay cool in the summer. We had made the difficult decision to put Zoey down just a month prior, so this gift was especially touching to me. And Colleen had shared the stunningly lifelike paintings that she and her husband did of their animals, so I was excited to give it a try myself even though I hadn’t painted anything but walls and vintage furniture since elementary school.

The canvas was remarkably detailed, a jumble of squiggly lines and tiny numbers. Even the clerk at Michael’s sucked in their breath and said “Woah!” when they pulled the newly stretched canvas out of its shipping box before handing it over to me. “Good luck,” they said, with more than a hint of “I’m glad I’m not painting that one!”

I took the canvas out a couple of weeks later when I felt up to the challenge, and soon after texted Colleen. “I think they used the wrong colors,” I wrote. “They have green showing on Zoey’s face and I think it should be grey.” She assured me to trust the guide that came with the paint kit, that it would all make sense later. Putting my faith in Colleen’s experience, I dove in … and immediately started judging myself.

“This looks lousy!”

“This is harder than I thought it would be!”

“These colors can’t be right!”

I found myself hunched over the canvas, a pair of my mom’s reading glasses perched on the end of my nose, making an entire universe out of the green paint on a single blade of grass. My back hurt and I had a death grip on the paintbrush—this was decidedly NOT fun.

But I grudgingly took the canvas out again to work on it the next day. And the next. Every day for two weeks, systematically working my way through the colors, turning the canvas so I could reach the areas I needed to with ease. My back straightened, my grip loosened, I noticed myself singing along to my background music. Hey—this is sort of fun! I stayed present, focused on the area I was adding color to, instead of analyzing the work I had already completed. And soon, I had made my way through all the paint in the kit.

I crept close to the painting, looking for spots I had missed and errant blobs of paint. Ugh—would I ever be done with this thing? I stuck the canvas on a bare nail in our exercise room, which we still haven’t gotten around to re-painting, thinking it would be a good place to store it until I had the energy to put the finishing touches on it. I turned on my heel, walked out of the room with purpose, and glanced up at the canvas as I headed toward the kitchen. I stopped in my tracks and gasped. It was Zoey, just as I remembered her.

In that instance, I realized the importance of stepping back and seeing experiences as a whole. Nitpicking our every choice keeps us stuck instead of moving forward and getting the chance to appreciate how everything seems to come together and work as a cohesive, beautiful masterpiece.

Similarly, we may have a day that the best choice we can make is to scroll YouTube for ridiculous animal videos. But if that day fell within a week that included a jaunt around the block, a video chat with a friend, and a moment to notice our breath, well, that’s a selfcare win in my book.

So I encourage you to pull back, to look at all the ways you tend to yourself over a period of time instead of second-guessing your selfcare choices or putting yourself down for ignoring your needs. And bonus if you can laugh or otherwise let loose along the way.

What can you do right now to nurture yourself in just a few moments, and how can that small act contribute to your wellbeing as a whole?

Connection has become one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from isolation during the recent pandemic. And thanks to technology, we can be together no matter where we are in the world. Click here for my free five-day at-home selfcare retreat, and get access to my selfcare satsang, a place where those who tend to others can share resources, encouraging words, and even virtual laughs. Seeing yourself as part of a larger, interconnected whole, is a truly nourishing way to care for yourself in just moments at a time.