Amber Wardell, PhD

From a cognitive psychologist, a trusted voice among millennial women, a call to action for readers everywhere to enter their true self-care era that will nourish and sustain them.

Toxic self-care culture tells women that bubble baths and Botox are the route to happiness and fulfillment. Though these types of self-care can fill us up in the moment, they cannot provide long-lasting nourishment. They are empty calories—the potato chips of self-care. 

And from them, we can never get full. In the same way, we will not feel fulfilled by reaching for the empty calorie “self-care” trends that toxic, materialistic self-care culture sells us. To fill our exhausted bodies and weary minds, to live fully and authentically, we need the kind of self-care that nourishes.

Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a call to action for women everywhere to reach instead for nourishing self-care. Though this may sound easy in theory, many women struggle to carry it out. We struggle because we have forgotten how to reach. Our training as little girls taught us that it is polite to be grateful for what we get. To say thank you but I'm full when offered second helpings. To accept the potato chips we are given because there are people on this planet who have none, so how dare we ask for more?

Through the narrative voice of a psychologist who is also an exhausted millennial mom trying to keep it all together, Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips explores courageous self-care in the areas of marriage, motherhood, family dynamics, friendships, career life, and mental health. The author's personal stories range from the hilariously-yet-painfully relatable to the resonantly heart-rending. Each of these stories—the beautiful, the sparkling, the sad and the chaotic—teach women something about what it means to reach. What it means to stop settling for potato chips and to instead grasp for the things that truly fulfill. Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a mindset—a way of embracing and stepping into all of our divine, feminine power.