Written By: Lauren Howard
I have had to turn off a lot of things in the last few weeks.
The weight of all of the things has been overwhelming, which meant that planning, writing, creating, and filming kind of fell by the wayside.
You know, the things that I really enjoy doing.
Add to that a pile of antibiotics for a GI infection and we have been all but shut off for weeks.
My brain just needed to survive long enough to get to the other side. There wasn’t time or space for the nonessentials.
We’re almost beyond it now, thankfully. The lights are turning on. My brain is firing with ideas and it’s ready to build.
My body, though?
My body isn’t there yet.
My physical exhaustion from spending weeks in what worked out to an extended trauma response isn’t over yet.
I want to beat myself up for it. I want to yell at myself to get my sh!t together and get back to work. I want to pressure myself because we’re just so behind on everything that we had planned.
Then I have to remind myself that it’s still logging miles even when you're running the marathons in your mind. Stress is stress, and you don’t have to physically carry a heavy load to feel the effects of it.
Learning to live in the in-between is one of the hardest parts for me. The part that intellectually knows what’s happening is not being supported by the part that’s covered in guilt and a superhero mentality.
I know what I would tell anyone else in this situation. I know the piles of support that I would hurl their way. I know all of the realities of how necessary rest is after illness, harm, or trauma.
I also know that we listen to the worst things we say about ourselves louder than anything else we say.
Rest is productive time. I’ll be repeating that nonstop as I wait for the two sides to meet.
Oh, and when they do . . . ya girl will be back on her BS. Wait for it.
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Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash
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