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I’m exhausted. My kids have been sick for eight months straight and winter has been one six month long gray and bitter day, with none of the fun winter things like sitting by the fire listening to the quiet nothingness of snow falling or hiking fresh tracks after a storm.
Just as I felt like spring might actually come and I was considering running outside again and excited to leave the house without wearing gloves and bragging about how healthy I had been — I got sick. The kind of sick where your teeth hurt.
Before I got sick, I was thinking about how far I’d come in my recovery from burnout. A year ago, I changed my entire schedule to support more rest. I gave up big parts of my business and committed to doing less — a lot less — to replenish my energy. Being sick brought back all the overwhelming feelings of a time when a fifteen minute phone call was more than I could manage. A time when, all I could do was get up, work, take care of the girls and lay on the couch.
When I woke up feeling feverish, with a pounding head, sore throat and full body aches, I realized how much I struggle to assess my own sense of wellness. Perhaps it’s my high tolerance for pain. So instead of trying to drag myself through the day, I canceled all my appointments. I boldly turned away from the demands of the day and got back into bed. With the sun streaming through the window, covered in weighted blankets, I fell asleep for hours and hours — my body so thankful. I’d finally learned how to give myself permission to rest and it was heavenly.
Every fortnight I spend hours writing, tooling, sewing sentences and ideas together to deliver a little piece of writing to you. I cherish this practice. It’s a place I return to between sessions, play practice pick-ups, meal prep and dog walks. A place where the present moment, the future and all of history converge. A place where my entire being connects with the universe. But, writing doesn’t come easy for me. I feel the world deeply. I understand the world primarily through feeling. So translating my kinesthetic and intuitive experiences into written words takes time. Each week, I feel the tightness of perfectionism creeping in, threatening to strangle the flow of creativity. And each week, I attempt to soften my body and remind myself to let go, as creating is an unfolding that takes patience.
This is a the long way to say, that in the spirit of ease over tension and creating over producing, I am resisting the impulse to “produce” a piece of writing this week. Instead, I’d like to share with you something I had previously written about my experience with burnout.
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