25 Social Self-Care Activities

1. Have dinner at your parents’ house on Sunday night, the usual time you go there for such visits.
2. Go out and sit by the pool on a hot summer day with your best friend and her kids (they’re also your godchildren).
3. Get together once a week with two other couples; play cards and whatnot while the children all play together in another room of the house.
4. Volunteer at your kid’s school, helping out in the library, walking around to make sure kids are doing okay on the playground, and helping with bake sales.
5. Create new friends by participating in an art class.
6. Go traveling; plan a trip with family members or friends.
7. Call up your best friend from high school who lives in another state; see if she wants to get together next time you visit your respective states or plan a trip to meet.
8. Organize a day at the park/zoo with any age group of children or adults, whether it be your kids, nephews & nieces, sons & daughters of friends.
9. Volunteer to chaperone on a class or school trip; this is done not only for fun but also to support and encourage kids to do good things.
10. Meet up at a movie theater with your college girlfriends to catch up, have some laughs, and see a sappy teen romance flick you all know you’ll enjoy laughing during without being too embarrassed about it in public.
11. Have a weekly sports night where people get together with their significant others and watch sporting events they all care about equally.
12. On Saturday night, play cards with your family members–parents, siblings, cousins, etc.
13. Join a book club; meet up with the same people once a month to chat about books you’re reading and discuss anything else that comes to mind after the book discussion is over.
14. Have game nights where everyone brings their favorite board game along and gets together at someone’s house to play all kinds of fun games.
15. Go on an outing just for adults once a month if you have small children at home–to go out for dinner, see a play in the park or check out an exhibition in town.
16. Have a monthly cooking get-together where several families come together with whatever dishes they’ve made and get to know each other over good food.
17. Organize group outings, like whale-watching tours, museum visits, boat rides on large lakes, and holiday festivals. Make time to connect with other adults who are parents but don’t necessarily socialize much otherwise because they’re busy caring for their kids full-time.
18. Form a book club where people bring books they want to talk about, and everyone at each get-together discusses one book.
19. Get together with your high school friends every year to celebrate the anniversary of when you all graduated together. This also serves as an opportunity to catch up with any classmates who may have gone away for college.
20. Get together once a week or so with two other couples in your neighborhood to have coffee to chat about local news, upcoming events in the community.
21. Depending on the size of your family, plan a weekend once or twice a year where you all gather at the home of a friend or family member and stay up till very late together; no parents allowed!
22. Host a monthly poetry night where everyone brings their favorite poems they’ve written over time or ones that speak to them and share them with others; this is great as an opportunity for self-reflection and sharing poetry with others.
23. Once a week, try having conversation nights where you all sit down and talk about your days: what were some things that excited you? What were some challenges that came up for you during the day? How did those challenges feel as experiences–what were some lessons learned?
24. On Sundays, time together as a family, reflecting on the past week and planning the upcoming week.
25. Find something you enjoy doing in your spare time and find someone to do it with.

Make it a point to commit to and carry out one
activity every Saturday or Sunday, or at least
once every month!

Though it can be difficult, learning to take care
of yourself is worth the effort