Go for a Spa Getaway on Your Lunch Break
Citron Spa's thirty-minute Glo Hydra Bright Radiance Facial can fit into anyone's busy schedule.
Getting a facial is always relaxing if you can find the time to fit it in. Photo from Getty Images.
I’m a busy mama. I have no time. When I’m not working at the office 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., five days a week, I am driving over the Washington Bridge through the East Bay to Pawtucket forty-five minutes each way. When I get home, I begin my second shift of shuttling my kids to sports, activities and Boys Scouts, then rushing home to make dinner and feed my children. Or I’m at a work event networking the night away. Everyone says, be sure to make time for yourself; self care, blah, blah, blah. You can’t pour from an empty cup! Most of us working mamas are surviving on fumes (and coffee). Thank you, coffee (in fact, my cup is never empty).
Sometimes I dream about taking a sick day and soaking up a spa day instead (cough, cough). But, oh wait, I actually need those sick days because my kids are always sick, or making me sick, due to the petri dish that is school. So how to fit in the holy grail of self care? I’m not talking one of those scary looking masks that you stick to your face while watching Netflix and sipping wine. I am not talking about listening to a perky but condescending self-help podcast while stuck in gridlock. I am not talking about reading a book from your bed while your little ones are still fighting over bedtime and you have all but given up chasing them with a toothbrush and yelling “Go to bed!” for the tenth time, and have finally retreated under your comfy bedspread with the covers over your head.
I am talking about going for a facial and fitting it all in during a lunch break. This is true self care. Citron Spa in Providence’s Wayland Square has an express facial that takes about thirty minutes and includes an additional private infrared sauna visit. I tried the Glo Hydra Bright Radiance Facial in the afternoon, as part of my late lunch break, and it was so much more relaxing than ordering a sandwich and scarfing it down in the front seat of my car. It was much more relaxing than running to the bank to deposit checks. It was also so much more relaxing than sneaking in a dentist appointment or bikini wax. I was in-and-out in forty-five minutes and made it home in time to get my kids off the bus (also accounting for the forty-five minutes stuck in traffic).
The facial left my skin looking way better than a night of fitful sleep where you wake up at 4 a.m. thinking about all you have to do the next day. In fact, I may have looked – dare I say? – glowing, with no need for makeup. The treatment involves sensitive skin-friendly botanical brighteners and nourishing antioxidants, and includes a peel. The best part is the massage around your face, neck and shoulders using scented oils (I chose grapefruit, but they have lavender and other scents, too). I also purchased a kit so I can practice the same intensive, relaxing skincare routine at home, to continue the glow all month long.
I left the spa feeling replenished, renewed and ready to “mom” again. Mom is a verb, by the way.
225 Wayland Ave., Providence, (401) 861-0908, spacitron.com
Indulge in some infused water, energy bites and daylight inside the relaxation room. Photography by Sara Zarrella Photography.
