Join the November Self-Care Challenge and Celebrating Love

What's up, guys? Welcome to Demo with Moe. I'm your host, monique Simmons. We'll be discussing dating, engaged and married objectives from a young Christian's perspective. Are you guys ready? Let's dive in. Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome to a new episode of Demo with Moe. I am your host, monique Simmons. Today's episode is a bonus episode. I have a few announcements for you guys for the month of November. If you guys have been rocking with me, I feel like I should get that on a t-shirt, because I feel like I say that to you guys all the time, especially my faithful listeners who have been with me since the beginning. You guys have been rocking with me and I just want you to know how much I appreciate you. But for the month of November, you guys know that it is my birthday and this year is really special. Every year is special, but this year is what they call a milestone birthday. This year is going to be my 35th birthday and I'm excited. So I have a few announcements I wanted to go over with you guys so you can know what we have in store. So every year for the month of November, I do a birthday self care challenge and what they consist of. I do at least one thing for myself every day for the whole month of November, so that can look completely different from day to day. Some things I plan in advance, depending what I'm going to be doing Like last year for the first time I took my first solo trip by myself, so something like that I would have to plan in advance. Or if I'm going to do something like a massage or a pedicure or if I'm going to see my hair style, it's just depending on the self care that I'm going to do for that day, or if I'm going to see my therapist. You know, because self care is holistic, it's not just what you usually see on TV or what's kind of portrayed on social media. Self care is taking care of yourself holistically, all of you, not just what people see externally, but even those things internally. Self care is just taking care of your wellbeing, whatever that is for you. And I won't get into all of that. I've done podcast episodes talking about self care. I've posted on my social media pages about self care. Even in my relationship community that I talk about all the time, we have self care Sundays, promoting this very subject, where that's all we talk about on Sundays, because that's how I feel about self care. That's how important I think self care is to our romantic relationships and our marriages, because the more healthy we are as individuals, the more healthy our relationships will be. But that's neither here nor there. It just depends on whatever that self care is going to be. Sometimes I have to plan it in advance, but on most days I kind of wake up and decide what I'm going to do for myself. But before I go to bed at night I kind of have the mind like this is kind of what I want to do the next day, but for that whole month of November, no excuses, I'm talking my foot to the gas. Each day I do something for myself. What I do is I post it every day. This is something that I personally do. I'm not telling anyone else to do. This is my own birthday self care challenge. I will post every day via Facebook. This is what I'm doing this year. This is what I've done in the past. I'm going to tweak it a little bit this year, but this is what I want to do. I want to post every day via Facebook, whether that's going to be a picture or video, or sometimes this year I'm even going to go live. In the past I've never went live during my self care challenge month. I've only posted pictures and sometimes I would do videos very rarely. But this year I'm going to kind of switch it up and this is what I do for accountability. This is a whole point of me posting. It's to hold myself accountable Because I've been doing it for so long now. It's kind of second nature to me to take care of myself without having to be held accountable or someone having to remind me. But in the beginning, when I first started this challenge, I was like I'm going to Self-care was not second nature to me. Someone would need to remind me. I was so busy taking care of everybody else. That's why it's called a challenge because it challenges me, because this is not something that I was doing on the norm For me to do with 30 days straight. It was completely challenging. I know for some people, myself included now that I'm on the other side of this, but I'm thinking about the people who were once the person that I was. If you're so busy taking care of everybody else, pointing to everybody else, cup and never refilling yours, never prioritizing you, never seeing about yourself, giving, giving, giving. This is going to be challenging. This is going to be hard. Sometimes it's going to feel like you're being selfish. Sometimes it's going to feel like, man, I got to do something for somebody else. How dare I just take care of me for 30 days straight? Some people can't even do stuff for their selves one day, 30 days straight. But the point of this was for me to get consistent in taking care of me. The more often that I did it, the more it became a habit for me, the more it became natural to me, the more I began to prioritize myself and love on myself and treat myself the way I deserve to be treated and show up for myself the way I showed up for everybody else. It just stuck Every year the whole month of November. This is what I do for myself. This year, not only am I going to post on Facebook every day, I'm even going to post on my Instagram and TikTok periodically. So this is just my accountability, and I would love for you guys to join me. That was the whole reason of why I wanted to do this bonus episode today, because I wanted to encourage you while I'm on this self-care accountability track for the whole month of November. I would love, even if this is not your birthday month, because you can't wait until your birthday month and do it for your birthday. Because I've had a lot of people, because I've been doing this for a few years now. I've had a lot of people who seem and they're like man, I'm going to jump on this for my birthday and I love, I absolutely love to see it. Like I love to see it. I love to see people taking care of themselves and pouring into themselves and refilling their own cooks Like I love to see it. But you don't even have to wait until your birthday month. I would love for you guys to join me, whether it's every day, for the whole month of November, for 30 days straight, or even if you can only commit to once a week, I would love to have you join me and, if your own socials, if you would post and tag me. If you're gonna participate in the self care challenge and you post what you did that day for yourself care, I would love to see it. I would love to be rooting you on, I would love to encourage you, tag me and I would love to be a part of your self care journey as well. Demo with Moe podcast on Instagram demo with Moe on TikTok and Facebook, I am currently looking for some self care ideas to try. We still have a little ways to go before we get to November. So if you are listening to this live, we're still in October. I would love for you to shoot me some ideas. So, please, if you could email me if you have any self care ideas. I'm open to it all and I would love to even try some things that I've never tried. So I would love to hear any of your ideas. Email me at demo with Moe at gmailcom, and I will shout you out, even if I don't get the chance, because, again, it's only 30 days, even though 30 days may be a lot to some people, but, depending on how many self care ideas I get and based on the ones that I already have for myself, even if I don't get to yours or, for some reason, based on where I live, I may not be able to do yours Because, say, you recommended that I go to the beach and put my feet in the sand, even though I definitely plan on doing it. Just saying, just saying I definitely plan on doing that. Well, let's say, you recommended that, but I'm not near a beach, so I'm just using that for an example. I may not be able to get to yours because I'm not physically near an area where I could commit to doing your self care challenge, but if I'm not able to use yours to get to your self care idea, I still will be shouting you out on my podcast episodes for the whole month of November. So I just wanted you guys to know that, because just the fact of you taking the time out to email me an idea I just want you guys to know how much I appreciate you, whether I use it or not. Okay, so that's the November birthday self care challenge. I'm excited about that. I cannot believe. In a couple of weeks I'll be 35 and my teenage son loves to remind me that I'm old which I am not old at all because I had him at a very young age but he loves to remind me that I'm old. But I will take it. I will take it. I will take it. The next thing that I'm ripped y'all. I am so excited about this. I am so excited about this. Y'all should see me right now recorded I'm doing a little dancey dance. Okay, so for the month of November, I will be starting a series called the journey of love. I will be interviewing different individuals and couples to tell the story of how they met in a journey that leads them to where they are now. Y'all I'm really I'm talking about, I'm ecstatic about this. I love to hear the story about how couples meet and I love to hear it from both partners' perspectives, because usually their stories are completely different, and not each part is always completely different, but there are always some parts of the story that is different. When my husband and I tell our story of how we met around friends or around church members or whoever we're around, usually when it comes up he always likes to say that I hit on him or that it was me that shot my shot, and everybody that knows that's not true. My husband has been trying to get at me and trying to talk to me and wanted me to be his girlfriend since we were in middle school and I finally decided to make him my boyfriend our senior year in high school. But you know, when he tells his version of the story, you may not get that version. You may, you may not. It depends on where we are, who he's talking to. So I just love to hear the stories of couples tell how they met. So I'm excited about this series. I am so excited because you always see where couples are now and for some people, you know you hear relationship goals. You, you know you may be envious or want what they have or desire to have what they have, but all you see is right now, all you see is the highlight reel. All you see is the beautiful picture posted on social media. All you see is the date night of them having a good time. All you see is the good parts. But you don't realize all of the background that happened, all of the struggles, all of the things that they had to overcome, all of the prayers that were prayed and all of the the sadness and grief that they may have had to walk through and all of the people that had to encourage them not to give up, and all of the laughter and the joy that that may have been there, but they also had to fight through some stuff to keep it there. You, just you don't realize all of that and it's hard to tell people all of that and give them all of that in one picture, in one sitting, in one conversation and one passing. You won't be able to get all of that, but me being able to sit down with these couples and with some just one of the partners and you being able to hear their stories of how they met and the things they had to walk through and the things that they overcame and the things that led them to where they are now. I'm just so excited because I am a context girl, I'm a Sunday school teacher, so I always tell my babies they're not babies, I just call them my babies. I teach teenagers but I always tell them you always need to know the context, because sometimes you can take a verse of scripture, you can hear somebody say one verse and they try to fit it to something, but it's taken out of context because with the Word of God, you need to know who they were talking to, the person that was speaking, what was going on in this story. You may need to go back a little bit to the previous chapter to know what happened up into this point. You need to know the context, you need to know what's going on, you need the full story, the full picture, and sometimes with a couple you don't know the full context. So you can think something, you can assume something and it's not true. It doesn't fit because you don't know the full context. So sometimes you need to go back a little bit. You need to go back to the previous chapter. You need to know who you talking to, what they went through the audience, you know where they came from. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay. That's, that's the teacher in me. So, y'all, I'm excited about this. I am really really, really, really, really excited about this. Like I can't wait to hear these stories. I can't wait. So you guys, that's it. I just wanted to give you those few announcements. Remember to follow me on socials at Instagram demo with more podcast tiktok, and Facebook at demo with mode. And remember, join our relationship community on Facebook dating, engaged and married objectives. And remember I love you guys, but God loves you so much more and I'll see you guys next week as we jump off this November series. Bye, I hope you guys have enjoyed. Follow me on Facebook at demo with mode. If you have any questions you would like answered here, live on my podcast, email them to me. At demo with mode at gmailcom. That's d e mo w I t h m? O at gmailcom.