DEAR KRISTIN: As I move more fully into 2023, I’ve made the decision to put self-care at the very top of my priority list. Why not place myself at the top of the heap? For years, I’ve been caring for others, focusing on others, nurturing others. As a result, my proverbial well has almost run dry.

Before I become totally parched, before my own waters run completely dry, I need to place renewed attention on my own needs and my own well-being, but something is still worrying me: Is there a potential for my self-care to become selfish? -- THIRSTY

DEAR THIRSTY: I love you -- I mean, I really love you -- for even raising the question about the potential for self-care to become selfish, because it shows a heightened sense of awareness.

Everyone’s talking and writing about self-care these days. It’s on the tip of almost every lip. The very act of seeking self-care has itself become a loud new priority and a victorious new anthem song -- and the good news is that it is women who seem to be singing it the loudest. We are the ones who so often fill the role of nurturer, caregiver, and yes, pleaser of people; we are the ones who often care for others until it hurts.

It's about time, then, for us to start showering ourselves with at least as much tender loving care as we shower over others. Fill our own cups first so that we have enough to give others. You know -- place the oxygen mask over your own face first. I get all that. I really do.

But the beauty lies in the balance. The beauty lies in the shining awareness that this isn’t an all-or-nothing game. As fully evolved and beautifully enlightened human beings, we are certainly capable of caring for ourselves and caring for others simultaneously, yes? The issue is balance and the issue is conscious choice, both of which require heightened discernment and self-awareness.

I have to be able to discern when my own tank needs refilling. If I’m running on empty and cannot take care of myself, there’s no way in the world I can maintain enough speed to catch up to you to make sure you’re okay, too. This is the heightened discernment and self-awareness I’m talking about: I’ve gotta be able to discern when my own tank is low so I can swing by the corner gas station and fill up. But if I’m on empty, I ain’t going nowhere.

But there is good news here, too: I really do firmly believe that we can care for ourselves and each other at the same time, because guess what? Caring for someone else doesn’t require me to reduce the amount of love that rests in my heart center! Where is it written that tending to my own needs -- saying “yes” to myself -- means that I won’t have enough love remaining in my heart to share with others?

I don’t want to get too deep here, but I’ll say this about love: Love is infinite. That means there will always be enough to go around. What is not infinite, however, is time. Time itself is about as finite as you can get -- not only finite, but in dangerously short supply, as evidenced by the hectic, harried lives we all lead. This forces us to make some important (and difficult) choices.

I’ll use myself as an example: I must make the time -- by purposefully taking the time -- during the eight hours I have each day, not just to care for others, but to care for myself. This requires planning and prioritization. It will require planning and prioritization on your part as well, Beloved. Schedule it out. Write it down. Stake the claim and set your intention. Self-care does not happen spontaneously.

You’ve already said you’ve decided to make self-care a priority in 2023. Congratulations! You’ve set your intention! Now comes the hard part: Now you must take the action. Execute. Manifest. Make it happen. Do the deed, sister. And as you do, try to maintain this beautiful balancing act I’m describing -- this balance between the infinite (namely, love) with the infinite (namely, not enough hours in the day). This will require you to find a new rhythm. I’ve no doubt that you can do it.

You mention that you’ve been focusing on caring for others for many years, and that you’re beginning to feel like your own well is running dry. You are right to be concerned, and you are right to begin listening to your heart when it whispers to you, “Take care of me, too! Don’t forget about me!” We must not forget to nurture, celebrate, and love ourselves. Loving others is key -- but self-love is vital, too.

The good news, again, is that you can do both! Doing one doesn’t cancel out the other. In fact -- and I’m using myself as an example here -- caring for others is itself a form of self-care ... within reason, that is. Let me explain:

There is something about the act of caring for those who are in need that is itself energizing, validating, and connective. Even when I am running on empty (or close to it), mustering up enough energy to help someone else often gives me the jet-propulsion I need to keep on going; to keep pushing. To keep placing one foot in front of the other. Love is energizing.

I know I said this earlier, but I feel like shouting it out again: The beauty of deciding to devote more time to self-care is that it doesn’t require you to constrict or narrow the size of your own heart center. If anything, it requires you to expand the size of your heart center. Expansion, not restriction.

And I’ll finish with this: I don’t think anyone believes that self-care, in and of itself, is selfish. The caring and nurturing of ourselves is essential to our very survival. Where the slope becomes slippery, though, is when we place self-care on a pedestal to the exclusion of all else.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if we are not careful, if we are not mindful, if we are not intelligent and intentional about the choices we make and the priorities we set, yes, the potential certainly exists for self-care to become selfish. Within this beautiful balance is where both the power and the glory live.

Self-care becomes selfish, in my opinion, when it becomes all that there is; when it exists alone, to the exclusion of all else. In other words, when we place ourselves at the top of the priority list to the exclusion of all else.

We cannot afford to focus solely on self-care. You know what? Scratch that last sentence. I don’t want to sound preachy and dictatorial. Instead, I’ll say that I -- emphasis on the word “I” -- cannot afford to focus solely on my own self-care. And you might not want to, either. When this happens, we have arrived at the intersection of selfishness and self-absorption -- definitely not a place I want to be.

May I suggest looking at this a bit more expansively? Instead of putting yourself, as you say, “at the top of the heap” -- your words, not mine -- why not kick this hierarchical thinking to the curb altogether? Why must there be “a heap” at all?

Instead of visualizing yourself at the top of the heap, why not try placing yourself at the solid center of your circle instead? Why not be the hub at the center of your own, beautiful wheel? A wheel that has many spokes and includes many people, all of whom benefit from your presence in their lives?

Our proclivity to be at the top of the heap, to solidify our place as King or Queen of the hill, only helps solidify our own hierarchical understanding of the world around us. Last time I checked, we all exist in the world together. We belong to each other.

So sing your self-care anthem in a loud and happy voice, sister, but don’t let your higher decibel level drown out the voices of those who are calling (maybe even whispering) for your continued love and compassion.

As you redefine your relationship with love (and with self-love), position yourself at the center of your heart wheel -- rather than the top of your heap.

It will feel better.

DEAR KRISTIN: My employer has notified me that working from home is no longer an option. Like many people, I am now working in the office again, full-time. After two years of working from home, I’d established a peaceful, productive work-life rhythm.

Now, suddenly, I’m back to sharing (and spreading) germs in a shared office environment. Back to inane water cooler conversations. Back to being stuck in a four-door metal box on the freeway for three hours every day.

My concentration and productivity levels have dropped and my inner peace has been severely compromised ... at least until the moment I walk through my door at the end of each day. As if all this weren’t enough, I’m now grappling with feelings of resentment, too, because I feel like my “mojo” has been messed with. Any words of wisdom? -- BACK TO WORK

DEAR BACK TO WORK: Yes, sister, I’d love to share some words of experiential wisdom -- with emphasis on the word “experiential,” because the advice I share with my readers comes from the depths of my own human experience. This is kitchen table talk.

Let’s start with the blessings that are hiding within the dark folds of your dilemma, because there are always blessings to be found. You write that your “mojo has been messed with.” It has indeed ... but it’s only been messed with. You haven’t lost it altogether. It’s still there, inside of you.

Consider it a blessing that you have become so intimately familiar with the texture of your own tranquility; you know its nooks and crannies. You know what it feels like to have it, which means you also know what it feels like not to have it ... which should tell you that there are steps you can take to get it back.

Here are a few super-simple ideas I can suggest that might help you adjust to being back at work. They’ve certainly worked for me at different points in my own working life:

Close the Curtains: When you arrive at your office in the morning, close the door -- then close your eyes! My own mama used to call this simple act of shutting your eyes “closing the curtains.”

Pull down the shades of your brain for a minute or two and allow yourself the luxury of both a respite and a reset. We often forget that the simple act of seeing, absorbing, and processing everything around us -- optically, anyway -- requires an extraordinary amount of neural and psychic energy. By closing these curtains for a moment -- by creating these purposeful pockets of peace -- we apply a healing balm to our brains; a spiritual salve. Remember that your eyes are your curtains! And these curtains belong to you and you alone! When to open and close them is totally up to you!

Speak Up: I must have missed the memo that said martyrdom is mandatory in the workplace. I’m glad I missed it, too, ‘cause it’s hogwash.

If you’re experiencing emotional discomfort or imbalance in your place of work, speak the heck up. And I don’t mean grousing about it under your breath or whispering about it conspiratorially with your co-workers around the water cooler -- you yourself brought up the “inane water cooler conversations.” That’s not what I’m talking about when I say “speak up.”

When I say “speak up,” I’m talking about creating an intentional opportunity to communicate with your supervisor and/or an HR rep who can hear you personally and professionally, then offer assistance. Employee Assistance Plans are there for a reason: to assist employees. If you work in a smaller office, sit down with your supervisor, one-on-one -- not just with the intention to let off steam (although that’s definitely important), but to engage in an impactful, solution-driven discussion that will bring about positive results.

Business owners, C-suite execs, and front-line managers in even the smallest companies are beginning to understand that happy, well-adjusted employees -- employees who feel like they’re being seen, heard, understood, and valued -- are the same employees who will be engaged and productive in the workplace. It’s important for everyone to work collaboratively.

Above all, don’t suffer in silence. Remember that mental health and martyrdom cannot -- and should not -- co-exist. Speak up.

Your “mojo” lives within you. You write that you don’t feel any sense of tranquility until you return home from work at the end of the day. Be careful with this.

While it’s certainly a fine and wonderful thing that your home showers you with such solace and serenity, keep in mind that inner peace does not necessarily emanate from the four walls of any one space. Tranquility lives within you. Within me. Within all of us. We don’t have to walk through a door to find ourselves in its presence; we don’t need to go anywhere to get to it, necessarily, because it travels with us; it rests within our core. That’s why it’s called “inner peace.”

Don’t misunderstand: It is a blessing indeed to have a special space in your life that brings you peace and serenity. I myself am fortunate to have many such spaces in my own life -- and the reason I have them is because I have chosen to create them.

But when I enter these special spaces, I do so with the awareness that what makes these spaces special isn’t the four walls that hold me, but the tranquility that moves within me while I’m there. The place is important, certainly, but the source of my tranquility is most important of all. In my own life, the source of my tranquility comes from my higher power -- and I am able to receive energy from my higher power wherever I go, no matter which room I’m in!

Again, I congratulate you for having a special space. All of us should have one -- and if we don’t, we should create one! These spaces can be elaborately constructed or, as I like to call them, “spontaneous sanctuaries of peace” -- meaning you create them on the fly. When you’re at work, sometimes spontaneity and imagination are required.

Let me share an example from my own workplace life some time ago: For many years, my “spontaneous sanctuary of peace” happened to be a very, very small powder room in the West Wing of the White House. As a White House staffer, I did what I had to do to make sure my tranquility toolbox was always full (which required a bit of imagination), and this West Wing powder room was as good a place as any other.

Before I’d walk into the Oval Office to brief the President of the United States, I’d always make a prayer pit stop in that powder room, even if it just meant closing my eyes momentarily or even kneeling for a second to ask for the calm and the confidence I needed.

I’ll admit that kneeling in that small space was quite a challenge -- particularly when I was in the latter stages of my second pregnancy, which I was at that time -- but I managed to make it work. And my prayers were always different: Sometimes I’d ask for strength, clarity and grace. Other times I’d simply ask that my water not break all over the beautiful Oval Office carpet. Often, I wouldn’t ask for anything: I’d simply listen to the sound of stillness and grace swirling around me. The simple act of creating these purposeful pockets of peace always filled me with a sense of energy and renewal.

Looking back on it now, the fact that I could transform my workplace into a place of tranquility made my years in the White House some of the happiest, most fulfilling years in my life. I created the tranquility and wore it around my shoulders like a comfortable cloak.

You can create a cloak of comfort too, sister.

Wear your cloak to work every day, with comfort and grace.

DEAR KRISTIN: 2022 was an absolute bear. Lots of loss. Lots of pain. I know it might sound a bit strange to write to an advice columnist without seeking specific advice, but I guess it speaks to the kind of dilemma I’m facing. I don’t need advice for one specific problem. I’m looking for guidance on how to find happiness in the most expansive sense. I’m tired of being sad. Stepping into 2023, my No. 1 goal is to find happiness. Can you suggest a roadmap to help get me there? Sincerely -- WEARY

DEAR WEARY: The roadmap I will offer you is the one you already have: It’s the roadmap where you live your life one moment at a time. It’s the roadmap where you move in one direction at a time. It’s the roadmap where you stand at the solid center of each and every emotion you experience -- even if that emotion is raw, raggedy, and razor-sharp -- and you embrace that doggone thing with the authenticity and fervor it deserves.

I feel your pain, Beloved. I feel your sense of loss and weariness. But I also hope you can feel what I’m offering you: In addition to my empathy, I’m offering you my love. My support. My warm embrace. Let these things lift you up and settle you down.

My goal in writing this new advice column, in fact, is to have my words wrap themselves around your shoulders like a comfortable cloak, and to extend a comforting hand of gentle guidance and grace. (Hence the name of the column, “Take my Hand.”)

That’s what I’m asking you to do right now. I’m asking you to take my outstretched hand and let’s see where we can go together. I don’t want to push you towards a ready-made solution or prod you towards a prescriptive edict: I just want you to take my hand so you can step into this New Year vitally aware that all you have living inside of you -- the inner wisdom and the emotional clarity -- is all you’ll really need. It just needs to be awakened and activated.

So take my hand, sweet sister, and indulge me for a moment while I share some of my own ideas about this headlong rush towards happiness.

I’ll start with a question: Why do we create such a hoopla about happiness?

While I love happiness as much as the next happy-hungry human, I believe that the emotion itself is drastically overrated ... or perhaps I should say that its constant pursuit has become something of an albatross around our collective necks.

Let me speak from the depths of my own human understanding: As I live each day of my life, I try to embrace every single emotion I experience in its own, full-throated authenticity -- even the ugly stuff.

Happiness -- as tantalizing and as toe-tingling as it is -- is but one emotion in a veritable sea of emotions. Sadness is another emotion. Heart-stopping fear, white-hot anger, foot-stomping disgust, all of these emotions (and so many more) comprise the ocean of emotions we experience as we live our lives. Each emotion has its own reason for being, and I try to give each one its own space ... within reason.

If I’m feeling a moment of anger, for instance, then doggone it, I’m gonna feel that anger for all it’s worth -- but then I must decide what to do with it. The choice belongs to me. Do I let it linger? Or do I push it back out into the deep water where it belongs? This choice is always mine: I can feel my anger, but I will not feed it. Feeding it gives it more power and permanence than it deserves.

Let’s also look at how you’ve worded things: You say, “My No. 1 goal in 2023 is to find happiness.”

Be careful with this.

Consider a bit more expansive an approach: If your only goal in 2023 is to find happiness, does this mean that when you are experiencing the fullness of all of your other emotions, you are falling short of your goal? Try not to fall into that trap. It’s a dangerous one.

I’m not saying that happiness isn’t important and that it shouldn’t be sought: It is and it should. But if you make the pursuit of happiness (or even happiness itself) your only goal, you are giving short shrift to your other emotions. Why not try letting each one of your emotions breathe and stretch out for a bit? Then when you’re done feeling them, serve them their eviction papers. Tell them to get to stepping. Kick them off your front porch.

This is not always easy to do with emotions, especially the darker, denser emotions. Lord knows I know.

Grief is a good example. Grief can get downright greedy if you let it, as can sadness, its close cousin. Both of these emotions -- sadness and grief -- can slip in and overstay their welcome. They’ll ring your doorbell, head straight up to the guest room, pull out the sofa bed, and settle in for the long haul unless you’re careful. They’ll hunker down in your heart and stay there for as long as you leave out the welcome mat. They’re sneaky and pervasive like that. Develop an exit plan for them before they get too comfortable.

I need to be careful here. I’m not saying we can just suddenly stop being sad by mere virtue of our decision to stop feeling sad. It ain’t that easy. Depression, for instance, is a clinical state that must be treated by a professional; it does not move out simply because you tell it to move out.

But what I am saying is that once I’ve decided that I’m in too deep and the waves have become too high, I must remind myself that I can reach for a life preserver. I do not need to experience my heavier emotions alone.

I can double up on my therapist visits, for instance, or sit down with a trusted friend, or seek solace and guidance from my pastor. We each have our own flotation devices -- and the fact that they exist at all is a wonderful reminder that we are not alone. None of us are alone. Neither are you.

Though you didn’t ask, I’m going to share this with you anyway because it has to do with the subject of goal-setting in the New Year -- specifically, with how I set my own:

As I step into 2023, my intention is not necessarily to be happy in every moment, but to be fully present in every moment. If happiness happens to arrive, amen and hallelujah. But if sadness or pain arrive, I’ll respect their presence as well, simply because I am human and this is what humans do: We experience emotions. This intention to be fully present in each and every emotion is not so much a goal as it a mindset; it is a way of being and breathing and cherishing and choosing.

From this place of open acceptance, my sense of contentment and connectivity grow even deeper. When I stand in full awareness of my emotions, a sense of enduring joy unfolds.

This is the stuff that sticks. This is the stuff that is sustainable; this is the stuff that flows through me constantly, like a river -- even when I am sad or lonely or confused. Unlike this emotion we call happiness, my contentment is not situational.

So as you open up your wide, beautiful umbrella of emotions in 2023, consider letting happiness be but one spoke under that umbrella. Heck, it can even be the strong, sturdy umbrella handle if you want it to be. Just don’t let your pursuit of happiness take up all of your space and energy.

Let awareness and acceptance be the river that runs through you.