Learning To Put Yourself First 🌞

Putting yourself first can feel impossible when everyone around you needs something from you. In this Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn, Dawn Super explores what self-prioritization actually looks like when you’re living with chronic illness, caregiving responsibilities, or limited energy. This post challenges ableist ideas like “we all have the same time,” and shares practical, real-life ways to protect your emotional and physical wellbeing. You’ll learn how small boundary shifts, shared responsibility, and self-acceptance help you conserve energy and stay on your own side—without guilt.

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What does it even look like to put yourself first? We all have different lives, so it's going to look different for all of us.

Someone said to me the other day, “We all have the same eight hours.”

And I said, “Do we?”

They said, “We do.”

And I said, “Are you sure about that?”

And they said, “Yes.”

I’m often the best person to have these kinds of conversations with because — let’s be honest — I look amazing.

The but you don’t look sick crowd nods along.

I don’t look like I have anything wrong with me, but narcolepsy puts these divots in my face.

We all have the same eight hours in a day… but what if I’m asleep for half of them?

“We all have the same eight hours in a day” is ableist. Period.

Teaching yourself how to hear things like that without letting it take your emotions for a ride is key.

And you do this by knowing yourself and fully accepting that you’re always doing your best.

This is also putting yourself first — putting your emotional state and your wellbeing before anything else.

I often feel like I’ve lived half my life on fast forward and the other half on pause.

Narcolepsy is incredibly challenging to live with, and I’m doing better than many others because I’ve taken the time to get rid of all the non-narcolepsy things that were weighing me down.

This gave me more headspace and heartspace to deal with the things that will never go away.

Here are a couple of the things I did to put myself first — and you can put it through the you filter and see how you can apply it to your life:

• Getting up at least 30 minutes before everyone else in the house so I could take my time and see to my own needs first.

• Giving my children as much responsibility as possible for their age because we’re a family and that’s what families do. They dress themselves, make their lunches, go through their checklist to make sure they have everything, clean up after themselves.

• One of the best things I ever did as a parent was go to each of the teachers and say, “I have narcolepsy. I do not help my kids with their projects. They do their projects on their own. I know you have 15 parents building Lego masterpieces, but I’d like you to grade my kid on their grade level.”

Many parents struggle helping their kids with homework.

Add in four decades of sleep deprivation and I’m about as useful as a doorknob on a dumbbell.

Phone a friend.

I’ll drive you to a study buddy.

Stay after school.

Talk to the teacher.

We’ll hire a tutor.

If you're dealing with a lot of stuff, don’t take on your kid’s entire education.

That’s their job. That’s their academic career.

Give them the tools, but let them do the work on their own.

Carpools, playdates, microwave dinner night — everyone has their job to do.

I made Mommy Time for myself.

I couldn’t leave because they were little, but I’d put on my headphones and say:

“Mommy’s checking out for the next hour.

If you need her, she can’t hear you — you have to come over and touch her.”

There were three of them, so I wasn’t worried, and it gave me a chance to spend some time in my head even though I was surrounded by chaos.

Find little ways to show yourself that you mean something to yourself.

Treat yourself like there isn’t a replacement — because guess what?

There isn’t.

I promise you:

you will never go to your deathbed lamenting that you spent time actually enjoying your life.

Wanna go deeper? Check this one out: