The Importance of Self Care

Written By Andrea Klein

Family Law is demanding and stressful, for the clients and for our staff alike. Dealing with high-pressure situations, tight deadlines, long days, and challenging clients can take a toll on our mental and physical health. This is why self-care is a must. We cannot pour from an empty cup. In order to perform at our best, we must take care of ourselves.

This is much easier said than done. In fact, it’s easy to neglect yourself when you are working long hours, juggling multiple cases, and managing the demands of a full-time job. For many of us, this also includes the responsibilities of being a parent. Balancing the demands of work and motherhood can feel like having two full-time jobs. It’s a constant challenge to ensure that our personal lives and our professional responsibilities are both getting the attention they need.

However, prioritizing our emotional, physical, and mental well-being is essential, not just for our health, but for the focus and clarity it brings to every part of our lives. When we take the time to care for ourselves, we gain the ability to approach challenges with a clear mind, make better decisions, and maintain the energy needed to perform at our best both at work and at home. This balance is especially crucial for mothers who are constantly giving their all to both their families and their careers. By ensuring we are well-rested, emotionally balanced, and physically healthy, we are better equipped to handle the stresses of both our personal and professional lives.

Emotional, physical, and mental well-being enhance our ability to be present and engaged, whether we’re dealing with a complex legal case, spending time with our families, or simply taking a moment for ourselves. It allows us to navigate the stresses of our careers with resilience and grace, ensuring that we can continue to provide the highest level of service to our clients while also fulfilling our responsibilities to our loved ones.

As they say, if you don’t make time for wellness, you will have no choice but to make time for illness. Neglecting our well-being doesn’t just affect us—it affects our families, our colleagues, and our clients. That’s why prioritizing self-care is crucial to avoiding burnout and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. At The Riley Firm, we, as leaders, believe strongly in supporting the mental and physical health of our team, recognizing that a healthy person is a happier, more productive, and more effective professional. Wellness is extremely important to our corporate culture because we value the health, happiness, and well-being of ourselves and everyone on our team.

At The Riley Firm, we ‘practice what we preach’. We build self-care into our corporate culture by offering our employees ‘Wellness Days’ where I have the pleasure of connecting once a year, for a full day, one-on-one, for a day trip to the spa, lunch, and it’s truly a day dedicated to simply pampering ourselves and filling our own cups.

I recently had a wellness day with two of our key team members. We spent the day at Go Place, a luxury Leisure Club & Spa located in Markham, Ontario. Go Place offered us an exceptional wellness experience with over 68,000 square feet of jacuzzis, specialty sauna rooms, treatment rooms, lounging, and dining.

We started our ‘wellness’ day at 9:00 a.m., just as we would on a normal workday, when we checked into the spa. After check-in, we changed into loungewear provided by the spa and spent the next two hours exploring the magnificent therapeutic rooms Go Place had to offer. We started in the Salt Room. Himalayan sea salt is rich in various trace elements, and at high temperatures, it can improve organ function while helping to eliminate built-up toxins. We then explored the Volcanic Rock Room, which was absolutely stunning. I could literally feel my pores open up while I lay on the floor of the room, staring at the beautiful rocks surrounding me. We spent a couple of hours trying out the different rooms, such as the ice room, the jade room, and the amethyst room, all of which offered different health benefits. We spent some time alternating between the hot tub and the cold plunge to help support the lymphatic system, leading to improved immune system function.

After exploring the spa for a couple of hours, we headed over to the treatment area where we had booked relaxing facials, including an eye treatment. The experience was so relaxing it was tempting to fall asleep. After that, we had lunch, and this was one of my favorite parts of the day. Having lunch with these two colleagues in person was a great opportunity to connect on a deeper level. We are a remote law firm. We meet daily in the morning to discuss our files and often meet through Zoom to discuss cases, but we do not spend much time getting to know one another. There is no water cooler to chat by; there is no stopping by someone’s desk before heading into a meeting.

While that’s great for productivity, we do miss out on that ‘human’ element at times, and that’s why I go out of my way to ensure I see our team members in person as often as I can. That is also why these days are so important to me. Every single member of our team contributes their unique skills and talents, and it’s because of them that we are the best. They are all so dedicated to their careers and their clients, and we are truly lucky to have such a wonderful team. Meeting with them one-on-one allows me to get to know them on a deeper, more personal level. I get to hear about their families, their children, and what’s going on in their lives, rather than just what is happening with our files.

The colleagues I went with are key players; they are family law clerks. They are so impressive. I am taken aback by their ability to not only perform their jobs so well but also be full-time mothers to children under 10. Essentially, that’s like having two full-time jobs. However, they do it all, with grace, class, and professionalism, and they remind me of what super-humans us mothers truly are, as they successfully ‘do it all’ and with a smile. We are lucky to have them on our team, and I am grateful for all they contribute to our company.

Taking one day a year to show them how grateful we are for all they do is an honor for me, and I am truly grateful for the opportunity.