Part Four:
Meet your body exactly where it is right now.
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| If you can't pencil yourself into your own life, then where can you? |
I think one of the most difficult parts of the healing journey, but arguably the most important is the willingness, and the necessity of meeting your body exactly where it is right now, and not allowing yourself to be long-term discouraged by its current limitations, but also recognizing the need to not push your body to do what it simply can not in the moment (which is the surest path to burn-out). Often times when people are ill or overwhelmed, you'll hear the advice "slow down" thrown around with abandon, but what many well-intentioned, able bodied, or physically well people who impart this wisdom forget or simply don't understand is what an utter hellscape the notion of "slowing down" seems like.
There are few things that sound more nightmare-ish than that to someone who's ever been bed ridden, or housebound for any length of time due to insufficient health, and just now feel like they're coming back to life out of some pseudo-zombie-state. "You can't be serious! IF I MOVED ANY MORE SLOWLY, I'D BE GOING BACKWARDS!!!" is how I think a lot of people feel when confronted with that particular piece of advice, and I also think it throws a little undue mental anguish into the mix on top of already being unwell, which I believe makes it easier to slip into depression, feel frustratingly discouraged, deflated, and adds to the difficulty of getting oneself on a path toward total wellness. Which, if you've ever experienced anything that had you laid up, a mystery illness you've had to unravel, or simply had shoddy healthcare that kept you in a holding pattern of sorts, you know full well how tremendously terrible a set-back like that can feel, and the toll it can take on an already delicate physical state. Naturally, when working on clawing your way out of the grips of a health scare or crisis, we can expect a certain amount of the doldrums to hit us from time to time, but keeping yourself from spiraling into severe depression can feel like an exhausting full-time job sometimes, and it's incredibly easy for something so small, and spoken in complete innocence to disrupt the delicate balance we've been able to miraculously achieve.
It's for these reasons that I prefer to approach my wellness by respecting my body, and its wisdom by bringing it a question instead of a direct order, and why when your feet hit the ground each morning (or not, depending on your situation), I think you should ask yourself "What am I going to do today?" and let your response back to yourself be,
"I'm going to meet my body exactly where it is, right now," and whatever, and wherever that place happens to be, I hope you will remember to bring the gift of kindness for yourself.
