Why self-care feels like another job for women and what I discovered while tying waist beads this summer.

Over the past few weeks, I have tied waist beads around women at festivals, markets and events across the Netherlands. Different cities.

Different bodies. Different stories. But I kept noticing the same thing among women. Queen, we are tired. Not only physically tired. We are tired from constantly becoming someone new.

We pivot from employee to mother. From mother to entrepreneur. From a career that once looked impressive to the uncomfortable question: ''Do I even want this life anymore?''

Some of us are building side businesses after bedtime. Some are returning to work after having children and no longer recognise the woman who originally chose that career. Others have done everything they were told would make them successful and are quietly thinking:''Wait… is this it?''

 And somewhere between the Teams notifications, school messages, unfinished business ideas and laundry that has apparently started reproducing, another thought follows us around: ''I should do more for myself.''

Why self-care for women can feel exhausting

Women do not need to be convinced that self-care is important. We already know. 

1. We have saved the morning routines.
2. Bought the journals.
3. Downloaded the meditation apps.
4. Watched women online explain how a five-step evening ritual changed their lives. 

The problem is not that we do not understand self-care. The problem is that self-care has become another area in which we feel expected to perform.

Drink more water. Move your body. Meal prep. Journal. Set boundaries. Sleep eight hours. Practise gratitude. Schedule a date night. Build a career. Be present with your children. And please remember to enjoy it all.

At some point, even taking care of ourselves started to sound like unpaid administration. That matters, because burnout is not always caused by a missing bubble bath. Sometimes the life surrounding a woman is asking more from her than one woman can sustainably give. Telling her to add a better morning routine can make the burden feel even more personal. She does not only feel exhausted. She feels as if she is failing at recovering from her exhaustion correctly.

 We were raised when hustle was a flex

Many women entered adulthood when being busy was treated as evidence that you mattered. We were encouraged to climb the ladder, build the family, buy the house, stay ambitious and turn our hobbies into income. Rest was something you earned after finishing everything which was unfortunate, because everything was never finished.

We became highly capable women. We can answer an email while making a grocery list, booking a dentist appointment and remembering that somebody needs to take something beginning with the letter B to school tomorrow. But capability has a shadow side: people become accustomed to you carrying everything. Eventually, you become accustomed to it too.

Then one day you realise that your body has spent years functioning as transport for your brain. It gets you to work. It carries children. It stays awake. It pushes through. It appears in photographs only after being positioned, covered and instructed to look smaller. You live in your body, but you rarely feel as though you are living. 

''I don’t care what anyone thinks'' has never been my truth I am an entrepreneur, a civil servant and a mother. I am also building BySanaah publicly. That means people can see me trying, changing, succeeding, getting things wrong and beginning again. There are opinions. There is criticism. There is love. There is a lot. And I would love to give you the fearless internet answer: *I do not care what anybody thinks.* But that would not be true. ''I actually do care.'' I am human. Of course some opinions affect me. I no longer believe strength means becoming so hard that nothing can touch me. There is something far more powerful and, honestly, far sexier about remaining sensitive without abandoning yourself.

That is part of what waist beads have taught me. Not how to become untouchable, but how to return to myself when the outside world becomes loud.

What traditional waist beads mean to me

Traditional waist beads are strands of beads worn around the waist or hips. They are found in multiple African cultures, and their meanings and customs are not identical everywhere.

 Depending on the woman, family or cultural context, waist beads may be connected to adornment, femininity, life stages, intimacy, heritage or awareness of changes in the body.

For me, as a Ghanaian-Dutch woman, they are not a costume, a passing trend or simply colourful beads on string. They are culture you can wear. They are adornment for a part of the body many women were taught to hide.

And because traditional tie-on waist beads remain on the body, they do not require you to remember another routine. They are already present while you work, care, hurry, rest and begin again. I do not believe waist beads cure burnout. They cannot reduce your workload, fix an unfair workplace or create the support system you deserve. But they can do something quieter. They can interrupt the habit of forgetting that you are a person inside the life you manage.

The moment I realised I needed to tell a bigger story

At recent events, I sometimes had only a few minutes with each woman. I would help her choose a strand of waistbeads, measure it and tie it around her body while other people waited nearby. Occasionally, my traditional tie-on waist beads were compared with inexpensive elastic versions. And I understood the comparison. If waist beads are presented as nothing more than accessories, then price becomes the easiest way to judge them. But standing there with my hands around a woman's waist, hearing her tell me why she chose that colour or what season of life she was in, I realised: ''I have not been telling the whole story.''

The beads I tie are not valuable only because they are beautiful. The moment also contains cultural knowledge, care, touch, trust and connection. It is one woman allowing another woman to adorn the exact part of her body she may have spent years criticising. That is not a transaction I want to rush through. It is not just, “Here are your beads. Next.” It is: ''Welcome. You belong here too.''

 Maybe you do not need another self-care routine

Maybe you do not need to wake up earlier. Maybe you do not need a new planner, a perfect self-care Sunday reset or a 30-day challenge you will feel guilty about abandoning on day four. Maybe self-care can begin with refusing to treat your current body as a waiting room.

Take the photograph enjoy the summer. Enjoy your body carrying you through the pivot. Enjoy your body going to work while questioning the career. Enjoy your body building a business after everybody else goes to sleep. Enjoy your body that has been functioning so efficiently that you almost forgot a woman was living inside it. You do not have to love every part of your body before you adorn it. Sometimes adornment is where a different relationship with your body begins.

From a piece of jewellery to a marker of a new chapter I often meet women who are between versions of themselves. Their old life no longer fits, but their new life has not fully arrived. They may be navigating motherhood, burnout, divorce, recovery, a career change, a new business or simply the realisation that they want more than survival.

A waist bead does not need to solve that transition to mark it. It can represent one clear decision:

• I will buy clothes for the body I have now! I will stop volunteering for responsibilities I already resent. 
• I will allow myself to appear in the holiday photographs. 
• I will remember that I am more than the roles I perform.
•  I will not wait for my entire life to change before choosing myself in one tangible way.

That is the kind of self-care I believe many women are craving. Not another performance. Something real. Something physical. Something that can survive an ordinary Tuesday. 

 You are not the only woman who feels this way At one event, a woman wearin waistbeads called out to me: “Let’s become friends!” My immediate thought was: ''Yes queen! We practically already are.''

Because there is community in recognising something in one another. The woman who is tired of postponing herself recognises the woman who has done the same. The woman beginning again recognises another woman standing between versions. The woman who spent years treating her stomach as a problem recognises the courage it takes to place something beautiful around it.

That is the community I want BySanaah to become: a place where the West African roots of waist beads are named and respected, and where modern women can experience them without being told they must first become thinner, more spiritual or more confident. You can arrive as you are, queen

A wearable form of self-care for the life you already have If you have been living in a body that only seems to work, carry, organise and endure, I want you to know this: ''You have not disappeared.'' You may not need to find the woman you used to be. She may no longer fit the life you are building. But the woman you are becoming deserves to be noticed!

Traditional waist beads can be one small, tangible way to mark that moment! Sometimes Self-care can begin with one decision tied around the body you already live in.

Ready to mark your next chapter? Explore BySanaah's traditional tie-on waist beads and choose the strand that meets you where you are today. Go to www.bysanaah.com for your favorite waistbeads