My last Christmas with my father was in August 1994. We were in a car. He began to sing, without the tattered red robe and cotton wool beard, “Christmas comes but once a year…” We twisted down towards Bluff Road and the car became a holy place. I heard him sing again of “the little laddie who didn’t have a daddy” who went home to play with “last year’s broken toys.” This time, he sang it more sweetly and more reverently than I had ever heard.

I cannot shake myself of the serenity in the car and the gentleness in his voice or the sight of his sharp blue eyes against the tanned face, white hair resting on the collar of his habitually-worn blue cardigan. He was smaller than I had ever noticed, hunched, or curled into the corner of the car seat, as if trying to occupy less and less room.

He sang innocently to me, and I believed to every child, with a faulty frail voice embodying hope born of humility. And it was a beautiful and holy moment—one for which an adult son might long.

Three weeks later he was dead.

Within each person is a holy place called The Self. It is here, in the deepest recesses of who each of us is, that the human spirit, soul, and intellect meld, forming the powerhouse for who each of us is. And, the subtle art of self-care (“subtle” because there is a delicate difference between being self-caring, selfish, and self-serving) is fundamental to good mental, emotional, and relational health.

Appropriate self-care is neither selfish nor self-indulgent. It is not self-centered-ness. It is not self-serving. It is self-awareness. It’s self-monitoring, with the firm understanding that each person is responsible for the condition of his or her self. Each of us is responsible for how we relate to all others (to neither dominate or be dominated). Each of us is responsible, when it comes to ALL other adults, for maintaining relationships that exemplify mutuality, respect, and equality.

Part of self-care is the enduring understanding that each person has a voice to be respected, a role to be fulfilled, and a calling to be pursued. Every person (every Self) requires room to grow, space apart from others, while at the same time requiring intimacy and connection. The healthy Self is both connected and separate all at the same time, underscoring again the subtlety required in the art of self-care.