For the last several weeks, I’ve been slowly reading Find Your Unicorn Space by Eve Rodsky. I am a bit of a Fan Girl of Rodsky because her book, Fair Play, completely changed our marriage. After implementing it, I was lucky enough to interview her for a blog post.
Fair Play, for anyone who hasn’t read it, teaches you and your domestic partner a fair and healthy system to divide household and family tasks, eliminating much of the nagging and guilt that is found in many relationships. It worked like magic for us and we tell everyone about it!
In her new book, Find Your Unicorn Space, Rodsky takes it a step further and encourages women to not just take household duties off their plate, but to add certain things onto their plate. And to reclaim their creativity by creating time for and focusing on their unicorn space.
Unicorn space, you ask?
She defines “unicorn space” as time devoted to something that is just for yourself. To do whatever it is that makes you thrive.
“I’m referring to the active and open pursuit of self-expression in any form and which requires value-based curiosity and purposeful sharing of this pursuit with the world, an activity that you lose yourself in, that you crave to go back to when you’re away from it, that gives you pleasure outside of your work, your family, and your other obligations. It’s something you do just for yourself and because it brings you so much joy you want to share it with others.”
An important distinction she makes is that unicorn space is different and separate from self-care. E.G. a long hot bubble bath is obviously amazing but it’s classified as self-care, not unicorn space. She argues that we need both!
This book not only helped me begin to give myself permission to create that space for myself, but she shared easy and very specific steps to set boundaries to make the time I needed. One of the book’s main points is that you won’t simply find this space and time… you have to create it and then prioritize it.
She encourages us to answer questions like, what is your passion? What are you interested in, but have been forced to put on the top shelf in the way back of your closet? What have you let go of because there was no time for it? What makes you, you?
As a mom, taking time for myself in any capacity always makes me feel a little guilty. But while reading this book, I realized that I (and every woman) deserve to have a passion project that gets my creative juices flowing and gives me a lil extra sparkle in life.
