On International Women’s Day our Soroptimist Club included an interactive session on self-compassion and self-care – particularly important during COVID. This was led by our Member Katherine Clark, an experienced life-skills coach.In April 2020 we said that our Club we would focus on wellbeing – “As we come through the COVID-19 crisis it is really important that we all stay as well as we can, so that we can enjoy our lives to the full when we move into the new normal… “
Almost a year later this was a timely reminder to be kind to ourselves.
International Women’s Day this year had the campaign #ChooseToChallenge – our Club accepts the challenge to work for a better world for women post-COVID. The photo above was taken at the meeting to show Members’ support. www.internationalwomensday.com
To remind ourselves of the International aspect of being a Soroptimist, especially on International Women’s Day, we watched this excellent short video from SI Esperance in Trinidad and Tobago, on “Choose to Challenge” www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxXQ82EDX7M&feature=youtu.be
Self-Compassion and Self-Care – Kat started by asking the group to imagine a sliding scale of responses to situations where kind, supportive, compassionate and nurturing are on one end and unforgiving, mean and intolerant are on the other end. Women tend to be harsh judges to themselves. We understood, from Kat using herself as an example, that we know what a difference it makes to how other people are feeling when we are kind and supportive towards them – and yet we can’t seem to apply that to ourselves.
Kat set up break out rooms with three per group and asked us to recall a challenging situation we had recently encountered and how we had managed it. The 7 minutes flew by and we were soon back together watching this excellent 3 minute video
After this we had some time to feedback from our groups. The session was brilliant and reminded us all that we are all human and we must be gentle and kind to ourselves if we want to be able to help others.
It we want to remind ourselves about self-compassion at any time Kat recommended watching videos by Kristin Neff – click here to view https://self-compassion.org/videos/
After this we covered regular Club Business including promoting forthcoming events and agreeing on end of year donations to charities who need the Club’s support. This information is sent to Members separately.