Daily Rituals to Help You Choose Yourself Again

Many women raised in high-control systems or people-pleasing environments struggle to choose themselves without guilt, hesitation, or fear. This pattern — often called pick-me conditioning — shows up in daily life as self abandonment, emotional shrinking, or a constant pull toward other people’s expectations.

Practical rituals can help rebuild a sense of inner steadiness. Simple practices like oil anointing, mirror-gazing, or writing vows to your own body give your nervous system something predictable and grounding as you learn to trust your own rhythm again.

This post explores how daily rituals rewire self-devotion from the inside out, why choosing yourself can feel unsafe at first, and how tiny, honest actions can shift your entire relationship with your energy. If you’re working to call your power back from old attachments or approval patterns, you can also explore my free ceremony — You Don’t Need to Protect Your Energy, You Need to Reclaim It — available by clicking on the button below. It’s designed to help your field settle before you begin these daily practices.

There’s a strange moment that happens on the healing path — the moment you realize you’ve built your whole life around not disappointing anyone, and somehow forgot to choose yourself in the process. It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It usually arrives in something ordinary, like making dinner alone or scrolling through shows you’re “allowed” to watch.

And for many women, especially those who walked out of church environments or high-control families, that moment feels like betrayal and relief pressed together.

A remembering.
A soft unraveling.
A kitchen witch awakening.

This week we’re talking about practical ritual — the tiny actions that retrain your body to recognize itself again.

Most people think self-devotion is a mindset or a mood.

A feeling you tap into when you have enough time, enough energy, enough stability.

But here’s the truth:
Your body doesn’t learn devotion from ideas. It learns through repetition.

And if you were trained to survive by being wanted, being chosen, being easy — then choosing yourself will feel strange, risky, even disloyal at first.

Right now, during these winter months when things go quiet, that discomfort gets louder. Your nervous system stops getting distracted by noise and starts telling the truth.

Let me tell you the moment everything shifted for me.

After leaving a marriage built on performance, I was alone in a quiet living room with a remote in my hand. A tiny thing. But years earlier, the shows I watched had to be approved — “uplifting,” “positive,” “not dark,” translation: nothing too honest.

But that night, in my own house, I turned on a crime drama I’d loved since college.

The opening theme played — sirens, low drums, a bit gritty — and I felt this warm, unexpected wave rise in my chest.

Not because of the show.
Because it was the first unnegotiated choice I’d made in years.

One small moment of wanting something without asking anyone’s permission.

That’s all ritual is, really.
A repeated choice that teaches your body, “I belong to myself.”

Take a drop of oil — olive, jojoba, whatever’s in your kitchen — warm it between your palms, and press it gently into your collarbones.

Whisper, “I choose myself today.”

One breath. That’s enough.

If you want more of these tiny rituals every week, hit subscribe — I send them out like little lanterns for your nervous system.

Choosing yourself feels dangerous not because you’re selfish — but because your body thinks you’re breaking an old rule. When safety was tied to being wanted, self-devotion feels like rebellion.

And in a way, it is.
A holy one.

Let that land:
Your nervous system isn’t fighting you — it’s protecting an outdated version of you.

Here’s the truth most women don’t realize until they’re in the middle of a life transition:

Self-devotion makes external validation optional.

When you practice choosing yourself a little every day — through oil, through mirror-gazing, through small acts — your energy reorganizes around your own rhythm.

You stop bending.
You stop shrinking.
You stop waiting to be chosen.

The longing softens.
The ache quiets.
The field steadies.

There comes a point when the rituals stop feeling like something you’re trying — and start feeling like something you’re remembering.

That’s the point where your identity shifts.

You stop asking, “Am I allowed to want this?”

You start asking, “Does this fit my field?”

Here’s a simple way to anchor this shift in your daily life: