Filling Your Own Cup and the Nurture We Find and Create
Updated: Mar 18
Tanya Tsikkos is an innovative jewelry designer who promotes mental health and well-being. COVID-19 left her with emotional challenges, and she found a way to cope and to improve her mental health with her jewelry creations and empowering messages.
Self-care isn’t indulgent, it’s essential. Maybe this March isn’t about giving more, but about tending to yourself, too. March always feels like a gentle turning point to me. There’s something about the light beginning to shift, the sense of things quietly waking up again, and with Mother’s Day woven into the month, I often find myself thinking about care in a deeper way, who gives it, who receives it, and how often we forget to include ourselves in that exchange.
I know this time of year can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s full of gratitude and warmth. For others, it can feel complicated – touched by absence, expectation, or memories that don’t sit neatly inside celebration. Most of us, if we’re honest, carry a bit of everything.
What I’ve come to realize is that March isn’t just about honoring mothers. It’s about reflecting on nurture itself and how we experience it in our own lives.
So, join me in gently exploring what it really means to feel nurtured, and how we might begin to offer that same care to ourselves.
The idea of the cup
We’ve all heard the phrase, "you can’t pour from an empty cup." And yet, how many of us do exactly that?
I know I’ve had moments where I’ve kept giving my time, my energy, my attention, without really noticing how little I had left. Not dramatically. Not in a crisis. Just slowly, quietly running on empty.
Sometimes the cup empties so gradually we barely register it. Sometimes it was never very full to begin with.
Filling your own cup isn’t about indulgence or stepping away from the people you love. It’s not about becoming self-focused. It’s about recognising that your needs matter too and allowing yourself to tend to them without guilt.
The nurture we find
I’ve noticed that nurture doesn’t always show up in obvious ways.
For me, it can be something as simple as music that shifts my mood completely. Or a quiet moment in the day where I don’t rush onto the next thing. Or losing myself in creating, when time softens, and my mind settles.
It’s rarely grand gestures. More often, it’s small, steady moments that remind me what it feels like to breathe properly. We don’t always have to search far for nurture. Sometimes it’s already there, waiting to be noticed.
The nurture we create
But here’s the part that feels most important to me, not all of us were shown how to care for ourselves gently. Not all of us grew up understanding that rest was allowed, or that boundaries were healthy. Some of us learned to keep going. To hold everything together. To be the strong one.
So sometimes nurture isn’t something we simply receive. It’s something we learn to create.
We create it when we say no without overexplaining, when we rest before we’re completely exhausted, when we speak to ourselves with patience instead of pressure, and when we build small rituals that steady us.
It doesn’t happen overnight. I’m still learning. But even the awareness – the pause before pouring more out, is a start.
A wider understanding of care
Mother’s Day can remind us how powerful nurturing energy is. It lives in mothers, of course – but also in friends, partners, creatives, listeners, and anyone who offers presence and softness in a busy world.
And I truly believe it belongs to us, too.
Care becomes sustainable when it includes the person giving it.
Just remember
Filling your own cup isn’t about becoming someone new or getting it perfectly right. It’s about paying attention. It’s about noticing what restores you and allowing yourself to honor it, even in small ways.
Nurture isn’t always something we learn to find, but something we gently create for ourselves. You are just as deserving of that care as anyone else.
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Tanya Tsikkos, Innovative Jewelry Designer & CEO of EntityUK
Tanya Tsikkos is an innovative jewellery designer who promotes mental health and wellbeing. COVID-19 left her with emotional challenges, and she found a way to cope and to improve her mental health with her jewellery creations and empowering messages. She has since dedicated her life to helping others to always feel good and empowered . She is the CEO of EntityUK, an online fashion jewellery company that combines jewellery with empowerment in each design. Her mission is to inspire, uplift, and empower all to live their best lives with confidence and style!
