Working Towards Wellness: November 2025

[itsfi]

Whether self-care is new to you or you're a seasoned pro when it comes to wellness activities, welcome! 👋

There's a lot going on in the world - be it due to the holidays season, or 2025 coming quickly to a close, or just everyday stuff. Sometimes, we just need a space to block out the outside noise and spend some time focusing on our own well-being. Or some time to remind us to look after ourselves. Consider this one of those spaces. Jump right on in and join us for another month of wellness bingo. 

Self-care, the activities we undertake for our own well being, varies on our circumstances and needs. We're each on our own personal self-care journey, but it doesn't hurt to have a little encouragement along the way. Or to be an encouragement to others as we work towards wellness. Wellness takes work; let's do the work together, BIC! 

For more information on wellness bingo, check out the following:

• How To Play
• Rows 1 & 2 Activities Described
• Rows 3, 4 & 5 Activities Described
• How To Post

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy November!  

Spoiler

Tagging a few folks who have posted to previous Working Towards Wellness threads. Will try to update tags throughout periodically. If I inadvertently missed someone, I apologize. Feel free to tag others you think may be interested. Be well!
@ather @blackkitty2014 @caitbird @CorgiMommy @curlychiquita @danielledanielle @missjeanie @PrettyPaint @Samtian @Shosh85 

[adamsev]

Yellow dots are the new stuff

I love family and extended family and having get togethers during the year and all but I really love it when they're all back home and it's back to normal. =P  Thanksgiving this year was supposed to be just me, my boyfriend, his kids and one of their significant others; my bestie, her boyfriend and his son, and my boyfriend's older brother.  Just 10 of us.  10 unexpectedly turned into 18 a few days before Thanksgiving, mostly his side of the family and that had me panicked at few times. 

- My boyfriend and his older brother took me axe throwing late one night a couple of days before Thanksgiving to let out some stress from entertaining more people from his side of the family than we originally planned. 

- Combined "Give yourself permission to ..." and "prioritize myself" - Told my boyfriend ahead of time that I was going to hide out in our room for like 30 minutes on Thanksgiving after the food was out and everyone had gotten their first round of food and drink to have some time by myself before they went out for a post-feast walk and I set up for the games. For my own sanity. LOL. His kids surprised me with a goodie bag for my time alone and they put a bag together with some coloring pages, a bottle of Starbucks nitro cold brew vanilla sweet cream, Reese's pb cups, and a lavendar candle. The two younger ones made me a pillow fort too in the bedroom. I lucked out with them - they are good kids. Grateful for all of them.

[CorgiMommy]

A pillow fort !!! How fun @adamsev 

[nuinui933]

Got most of the boxes done before the end of November.

Fall faves and warm, cozy drink - one of my family's traditions is to put up the Christmas tree and indoors and outdoors decorations at my dad's place on the Sunday after Thanksgiving with all the kids and grandkids and extended family if they're in town. After it's all done then it's pizza for everyone and mulled wine or beer for the adults and the kids apple cider punch, juice or milk. I've missed a few of them being away from home the last couple of years and that made this year more fun, and because my second oldest brother got engaged!

Stress management and meditate/breathe - went to some yoga classes; one was called breath & body - you hold the poses longer to focus on your breathing and to help with slowing down and focusing on energy flow, emotions, not being all over the place which is me a lot of times.

Work on joy and practice gratitude - it's been a lot of fun to spend time with my family. Back home now and even more grateful to have such an extended amount of time with them.

[CorgiMommy]

What a memorable day, sounds perfect @nuinui933 

[missjeanie]

Holy Bingo @nuinui933 !!  You nailed it in November.  Your decorating tradition sounds like such a wonderful way to celebrate and spend time with family while getting everything ready for the season.  Congrats to your brother as well!

[nuinui933]

@missjeanie 

Thank you! His neighbors are into decorating too so it's fun to see what everyone does. Thanks we're happy they're engaged she's very sweet. He jokes that we like her more than him. My oldest and youngest brothers tell him that he's not that wrong whenever he says that. 🤣

[missjeanie]

My final card for November!

 I believe the diamonds were the second half of the month.

- Body Care -- I took the time to get a massage in this month.  It was actually really nice and I should try to make use of this benefit more often.  

-Stretch 30 minutes- My nieces saw this sitting out when they were over and they insisted on leading a stretching session.  They both are quite competitive in dance so I did have to adjust for what my body could do compared to theirs "Common Auntie, this one is easy".

-Music Therapy--  We put up my Christmas Trees at our sleepover weekend and the holiday tunes were pumping the entire time.  Where I tend to leave the house quite quiet, these girls have music going during a lot of the day!  Much fun was had when they found out I could sing along to more songs than they thought!

-Read Audiobooks/Podcasts/Tv/Movie -- I've been doing a lot of highway driving of late and have been putting on some history podcasts that I enjoy to help pass the time.

-Exercise 30 minutes - I'm attributing this one to my nieces as well.  Keeping up with two kids is a lot of exercise!  We ran through the mall for a good couple of hours, then partook in a bit of a walk through the city to go enjoy the annual Santa parade.  I'm also going to call shoveling snow off my back deck and walkways exercise.  It was very humbling lol

-Reflect, Refocus, Recharge, Resolve-  I've had some things change in my life and decided to refocus my efforts with regards to that to something new rather than continuing to do the same things and just hope they'll suddenly work.  I'm no longer perusing this particular avenue and so feel quite resolved to just let things lie going forward. 

- Give yourself permission to...- This was a tough one, I ended up deciding that the thing I was so focused on above is something I just need to give myself permission to let go of and let myself enjoy things without that always being a consideration.  We'll see how that holds up in the longer term, but so far.... It's a work in progress.

- Prioritize me- I did this quite a bit this month.  There are too often times when in this day of microsoft teams people expect you to drop what you're working on to help them right away.  I've managed for most of the month to only check my work email twice a day and when people ask for help on something via teams I'm offering to add it to my schedule at a time that works for me.   I've also turned off notifications which helps me not get distracted.  This may be prioritizing my work, but in that... I'm not staying late trying to finish things I could have been done already.

-Have a healthy meal - I will absolutely admit that I am a fan of a restaurant or girl dinners way too often anymore!  After having the little ones with me for three days we were all eating out way too much and we decided to make our own rice bowls (think Chipotle) for our last dinner together.  They were fantastic and really reminded myself that I should do that more often even if I'm only cooking for one!

[CorgiMommy]

@missjeanie you nailed the self care this month, congratulations 

[nuinui933]

@missjeanie 

I love rice bowls they're my default meal to make because I can just toss whatever I have in the house, including leftovers from the week. That's good you prioritized yourself. I think that's a hard one but good when you do spend time to do it.

[missjeanie]

@nuinui933 I have to remind myself and others at work sometimes that we aren't doing life and death today.  Things can wait and I don't need to feel pressured to do everything right that second.  

I had rice bowls again today and it was so good!  And you're right, a great way to clear out the fridge!

[itsfi]

Holy smokes @missjeanie! I count 6 BINGO's here since your last check in - wowza! 😍 Look at you go!! 👊

Image Credit: edmondsdowntown(org)

Okay, "drink bingo" - add it to the "to do" list, missjeanie! 

Love that you were able to spend so much time with your little ladies! It's a joy that really goes beyond words. They're lucky to have you, and you them. 💖

But I will say that the "Common Auntie, this one is easy" - uh huh ... yeah, sure, easy. 🙄  😂🤣😂  I think you need a massage after that visit, and if you already got one, I say, get another one. There were two of them. hahahaha! I support regular massages - the benefit goes beyond the physical and if you can get them in regularly or semi-regularly, you'll discover that you never knew how much you needed them. Do for science. Do it to (try to) prove my theory wrong. Just do it!

[missjeanie]

@itsfi hahahha... I think Drink Bingo sounds like something we may need for the next Sephoria?  

I feel so bad about not getting massages.  I have full coverage to go get them at least once a month and I honestly just never think about it until it's December and everyone is reminding us all to go use up our benefits!  

The girls LOVED the bingo card and both really wanted to help me get a few more bingo's.  My eldest niece already asked if Decembers card was ready and if she could help me check off a few boxes.  They both picked out some markers for the December card as well!  

[itsfi]

Oh, if you have them covered, you should definitely get the full worth of those benefits @missjeanie! Is it too much of an inconvenience to schedule 2 or 3 in advance? And make it almost like part of your schedule? 3rd Wednesdays of the month, 1 hour massage. Or once every X weeks? Sometimes I find I'm more likely to go or to remember to do it if it's already scheduled. If a conflict comes up, then I can cancel and reschedule but if I've already made the appointment, I'm more inclined to keep it and after the massage I am more aware of how helpful it is and make that next appointment.

[missjeanie]

@itsfi I feel like you're absolutely right.  I just gotta actually do it.... 

[Samtian]

Full board!!!! I tried to color more squares but they all fused together haha. I didn't think I'd manage it but I did. 

[CorgiMommy]

@Samtian congratulations

[Samtian]

@CorgiMommy Thank you!

[itsfi]

Woohoo!!! 🎉 You did it @Samtian; this is awesome! BINGO's all around. Ohhhh yeeeaaahhhh!!! 👊 Amazing, amazing work!!! 

 

[Samtian]

@itsfi Thank you thank you thank you! I love the Pokémon gifs!

[itsfi]

Do you know how hard it is to find one without that one Pokemon you are not as fond of?!!!  Oh goodness!!! It's been a while since I've played the game @Samtian so I had to look up some of these characters 😅